NO SAFE PLACE

by Steven M. Roth

  He returned to his desk and sat down.

  “Major, listen up.”

  “Sir?”

  “Make this grab your top priority. I want Austin, and I want him soon.”

  CHAPTER 70

  Quarantine

  Day 25

  Trace, Ibrahim and Jenna sat on the floor at the rear of the lobby, their backs against the wall. Jenna and Ibrahim stared at their cell phone chargers, watching the red lights blink as their phones sucked in energy.

  Trace stood and stretched.

  “I’ll be back. I’m going to walk out the kinks in my legs,” he said.

  Jenna looked at him, narrowing her eyes, then glanced at the lobby’s entranceway, but said nothing. Ibrahim looked up at Trace, nodded once, and then went back to watching the red light flashing on his charger.

  Trace walked to the side wall that faced the patio.

  Floor to ceiling drapes, hanging at ten foot intervals, lined the wall. Trace hoped these drapes hid the French doors he’d noticed when he and Ibrahim had walked across the outdoor patio.

  He approached the first curtain and took its edge in his hand as if this action was an afterthought. He pulled the edge out and turned it over to inspect it. His subterfuge rewarded him. He saw French doors behind the drapes.

  He looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He didn’t see anyone. He quickly stepped behind the drapes.

  Trace turned to the French doors.

  The doors were locked, as he expected they would be. He turned the latch, unlocked them, and opened one door a crack.

  Trace reached into his pocket and took out the food rationing regulations Ibrahim had given him. He tore off a corner, crushed it into a tiny, compact ball, and forced the wad into the metal opening where the door latch would ordinarily fit when the door closed. The door now would not lock when it closed, even if someone were to take the trouble to reset the lock button.

  He stepped out from behind the drapes and repeated this process three times along the curtained wall before returning to Ibrahim and Jenna.

  “What were you doing behind the curtains?” Ibrahim asked when Trace sat down.

  “Jamming the locks on the French doors in case we have to go out that way in a hurry.”

  “Cool,” Ibrahim said.

  Trace looked over at Jenna.

  She’s watching the lobby’s entrance pretty intently, he thought.

  He walked over and sat down beside her.

  “You seem to have something on your mind,” Trace said.

  “I’m fine,” Jenna said.

  She stood up and walked a few feet away, then started to pace. She looked again, furtively this time, toward the lobby’s entrance.

  Trace watched her. He narrowed his eyes. There are three kinds of people who pace, he thought. Those who are thinking through a problem, those who are nervous, and those who have something to hide. He decided in Jenna’s case, she had something to hide and was nervous about it.

  “Want to talk about what’s bothering you?”

  “I said I’m fine. Nothing’s bothering me. I told you.”

  Jenna walked over to the other side of Ibrahim, and sat down beside him.

  Trace stood up and followed her.

  “Mind if I join you?” he said.

  Without waiting for her answer, he cork-screwed his legs down and sat in a Bodhisattva-like posture, his legs crossed at the ankles. He faced Jenna and looked at her straight in her eyes. He held her gaze until she looked away.

  Then she turned back to face him.

  “Why do you keep looking at me like that?” she said. “What’s wrong with you? You’re creeping me out.”

  “Why do you keep looking at the entryway?” Trace said. “Expecting someone?”

  “I don’t keep looking at it. Anyway, it doesn’t mean anything. Why are you picking on me?”

  “You’ve been sneaking looks at the entrance since Ibrahim and I got back here,” Trace said. “Who’re you expecting?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just leave me alone.” She glanced at Ibrahim, then back at Trace.

  Trace opened his mouth to answer, but a deep voice cut him off.

  “Is there a problem here, Jenna?”

  Trace’s alarm system kicked into high gear. He looked in the direction of the voice, even as he instinctively started to stand to reduce his vulnerability. What he saw stopped him cold.

  A young man in his middle or late twenties stood four or five feet away facing him and Jenna. He was fairly big, at least 6’2”, and two hundred-plus pounds. From the looks of his arms, chest and shoulders, Trace decided, that’s muscle, not flab.

  He wore his hair cut close, Marines’ boot camp style. His neck seemed to be an extension of his head and broad shoulders rather than a defined and functioning body part of its own. Mr. No Neck, Trace thought. A jock. Probably a weight lifter or wrestler. Strong, powerful, and muscle bound, not quick and limber, not agile and able to cope with T’ai chi’s speed and dexterity in hand-to-hand combat. At least, I hope.

  Trace started to straighten up, alert to act if necessary. He looked at No Neck, then at Jenna, then back at No Neck.

  “Sit down,” No Neck said to Trace. His tone brooked no opposition.

  Trace didn’t move. He remained suspended in his half-standing, half-kneeling T’ai chi juan attack posture, his upward motion stopped in situ. He was fully alert to any threatening movement by No Neck.

  “Sit down,” No Neck said again, looking hard into Trace’s eyes. “Please,” he added after a brief pause.

  As he said “please,” No Neck stepped away from Trace, lessening Trace’s perceived threat.

  Then No Neck melted to the floor, drilling down into an Indian-style sitting position.

  Trace relaxed and nodded to No Neck as he, too, dropped to the floor. He settled in next to Jenna.

  Trace watched as No Neck looked at Jenna, then at Ibrahim, whose eyes were like silver dollar pancakes. Then No Neck looked back at Trace.

  “It’s time for us to talk,” he said.

  He turned slightly and pointed across the room, through the vestibule, directly at the entrance door.

  “Let’s go outside to the patio,” he said. It was not a request.

  No Neck stood up and walked away without saying another word.

  CHAPTER 71

  Quarantine

  Day 25

  Trace pulled up a patio chair and narrowed his eyes as he faced No Neck. He remained alert to any physical threat.

  “Why’s it time for us to talk?” he said, reprising No Neck’s last statement. “I don’t have a clue who you are or what you’re talking about.”

  “I know some things about you though,” No Neck said. “Enough to know we’ve some common interests.” He paused, then continued, “I’m Alex.”

  “Skip the introductions,” Trace said. “I don’t care about your name. What do you think you know about me?” His eyes scanned the patio as he spoke.

  “I know your son died while you and your wife were visiting here.”

  Trace’s stomach tightened.

  “I know your mother-in-law also died in the Quarantine Zone. You tried to get medicine to help them both, but couldn’t.”

  “Who are you, besides your name?” Trace said.

  “I also know the government is deliberately withholding food and medicine from the Quarantine Zone,” No Neck said.

  Trace tapped his foot and clenched and unclenched his fist.

  “There’re other things you should know,” No Neck said. “Just hear me out. You won’t be sorry.”

  Trace looked at No Neck, held his gaze, then nodded.

  “Do you remember when you met Jenna?” No Neck said. “On the street corner.”

  “I remember.”

  “She told you she came here for spring break, that her cousin was here.” He paused. “I’m the cousin.”

  Trace now understood No Neck’s source of inform
ation about him and his family.

  “What’s your point?” Trace said.

  “We can help each other. We can share skills to make our lives better while we’re stuck here, help us survive until the quarantine’s over.”

  “What skills do you think I have that would be useful to you? I’m a middle-aged technology lawyer. Unless you need a computer manufacturing license or a software development contract, I won’t be much help.”

  “You underrate yourself. I know you’re an ex-SEAL. You have team-building skills and survival skills that can be useful for all of us. I also know you have serious computer skills. You’d have to have them for your kind of law practice.”

  “The key term concerning my time with the SEALs is ex. What you call my SEALs’ skills, they’re history. Too rusty to rely on.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said, but I doubt you’ve lost your trained instinct for survival, your trained state-of-mind, the mind-set that makes a SEAL a SEAL.”

  “For the sake of argument, suppose you’re right. So what?” Trace said. “Let’s flip this around. What do you bring to the table. You’re a college kid playing at being a warrior?”

  Alex laughed. “Not quite. I also have a history, a life before college. I’m older than my current college level would suggest.”

  Trace was curious, but said nothing, waiting. He wanted to see where the kid would go with this.

  “Before college I was in the Pembroke Avenue Crew, a Brooklyn street gang. I specialized in organizing limited resources into useful tools and weapons. I was good at what I did.”

  “Nice résumé,” Trace said. “What’re you proposing, that we form a street gang?” Trace shook his head. “If so, count me out. I won’t do that. Not even under these circumstances. I’m law abiding by nature and by training.”

  “Since I’ve been trapped here,” Alex said, ignoring Trace’s objection, “I’ve been reactive, even passive at times, responding to decisions made by other people who don’t give a damn about me. You’ve probably been the same way.”

  Trace nodded.

  “I don’t know why it is,” Alex said, “but the government’s not looking out for any of us. Otherwise there would be enough food, medicine and other necessities brought into the Quarantine Zone. It’s not like they can’t fly this stuff in from the rest of the country if they want to. They were able to do that after Hurricane Katrina, weren’t they?”

  Trace again nodded, but again held his tongue.

  “If the authorities aren’t going to help us, we need to take care of ourselves. There are plenty of people around the Quarantine Zone who feel the same way.”

  Trace said, “Suppose I agree, then what?”

  “For starters,” Alex said, “we should get Ibrahim, Jenna and me over to your condo. We should stay together in one place, a private place. It’ll be safer than squatting in hotel lobbies like we’ve been doing.”

  “We can’t stay at my place.” Trace described his recent run-in with the soldiers, then added, “They’ll be watching for me at the condo. We would need some other place.”

  Trace paused and thought for a moment.

  “We also need to get my wife away from the condo, but I can’t be the one who does it. Any ideas on that front?” he said, curious to test Alex’s wiliness to help and his creativity.

  “I’ll do it tonight, in the middle of the night,” Alex said. “I’ll bring your wife out tomorrow morning after curfew ends. We’ll walk out together like we don’t have a care in the world. But she needs to know I’m coming.”

  Trace and Alex talked this over and decided to try it.

  “I’ll call Isabella,” Trace said, “but not with my cell phone. I don’t want to be pinged and traced from its GPS chip.”

  Alex handed over his phone.

  “Tell her to keep her phone open. If I get through surveillance, I’ll call her. I’ll let the cell ring twice, then hang up. I’ll call her right back, let it ring three times, and hang up again. She’s not to answer either time. Then I’ll come to her door and knock the same way. Two knocks, then three.”

  “What if there’s a problem?”

  “Then it won’t be her problem, it’ll be mine. In that case, she should stay put until you come up with a different plan. If that happens I won’t be in the picture anymore.”

  Trace dialed Pete’s cell phone number. Isabella picked up on the second ring.

  “Bella. It’s me. Just listen to me. I have to keep this short.”

  He told her the plan.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 72

  Quarantine

  Days 25 and 26

  Trace and Alex left the patio and rejoined Jenna and Ibrahim in the hotel’s lobby. Alex whispered the new arrangement to them. Ibrahim suggested they shouldn’t continue to stay at the Palm Court Hotel since he and Jenna probably were familiar faces there by now. They all agreed they’d move to the nearby Hotel Carlota where none of them had been before.

  At 2:10 a.m. Alex propped himself up on his elbows. He was lying on a small berm overlooking the entrance to Nanna’s condominium building. He’d been on the hill for almost forty minutes, watching and listening for some sign of surveillance.

  The night was quiet except for the chirping of crickets, the occasional hoot or screech of an owl, and the constant, undulating whine of cicadas.

  Although Alex eventually satisfied himself there were no human watchers around, he worried there might be cameras in place of human assets, but he didn’t see any. It still was too dark for the drones to be out. He decided to make his move.

  Alex entered the building and stepped behind the stairs leading to the second floor. He dialed Isabella’s cell phone and performed the prearranged signals. Then he hurried up the stairs and, using his knuckles, knocked the same prearranged signal pattern on the condo’s door.

  Isabella opened the door for Alex, stepped out of the way to let him in, then leaned her head out into the hallway. She looked up and down the hall, but didn’t see anyone. She quickly closed the door.

  She and Alex quietly introduced themselves, whispering into each other’s ear.

  The next morning Isabella stood by the sofa in the living room and whispered, “Alex, it’s 6:00 a.m. You wanted me to wake you. It’s time to leave.”

  Alex opened his eyes, rubbed them, and looked up from the sofa at the voice that had just pulled him away from a dream.

  He bolted upright.

  “Is that you?” he whispered. “You look great.”

  He smiled and complimented Isabella on her overnight transformation from an attractive, fit, middle-aged woman into a frumpy, elderly woman.

  Isabella was wearing one of Nanna’s wigs, a blue-grey hairpiece with tight curls. She also wore one of Nanna’s house dresses which she’d stuffed with rolled shirts and small towels to fill-in the vast hollows it now contained. She held Nanna’s cane in her hand.

  “I’m ready when you are, Young Man,” she whispered in Alex’s ear, using a simulated, high-pitched elderly voice.

  “Perfect. Just perfect,” he whispered back. “Let’s hit the road. I’ll take you to the hotel.”

  CHAPTER 73

  Quarantine

  Day 26

  “So that’s the situation, Sir,” the major said.

  “What do you mean she disappeared?” Vista slammed his fist on the desk. “How could she disappear? You were surveilling her, weren’t you?”

  “Sir, I don’t know what to say.”

  The major stood at attention, his back straight and rigid. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

  “We proceeded last night just like every other night since we started the surveillance, Sir.”

  “Then where is she, Major?”

  “We don’t know, Sir.” He stared, unblinking, at the wall behind the general.

  The major remained at attention, his eyes staring straight ahead, intentionally unfocused so he could not see the general in his peripheral vision.

  “You
screwed up my chance to take the ex-SEAL, you fool. His wife was going to be our bait.”

  The major remained silent, resolved not to speak unless asked a specific question, lost in his own unpleasant thoughts.

  “When did you last log her in?”

  “At 2345 hours, Sir. We monitored the female subject using the parabolic mike with the Super Ear. We heard her prepare herself for sleep, sing to herself, then settle down. We heard her turn off the radio and click off the light. After approximately thirty minutes, when we heard nothing more, we assumed she was asleep, so we relaxed contact until morning.”

  “But she wasn’t sleeping, was she, Major? She was playing you.”

  “No, Sir. I mean, yes, Sir, she was. I mean . . . .”

  Vista shook his head in disgust, turned away, and went behind his desk and sat. He stared down at the desk-wide blotter.

  The major continued. “We resumed full monitoring at 0700 hours, Sir. At 0900 hours, because we still hadn’t heard any activity, but thought she might still be asleep, we sent in a decoy disguised as a civilian looking for his wife. The apartment was empty.” He imperceptibly rolled his shoulders to release tension.

  “We’ve flagged her and her husband in the system, Sir. It’s just a matter of time before they tip their hands and we have them.”

  Vista shook his head slowly and then stood up and walked out from behind his desk.

  The major watched Vista approach from the corner of his eyes. The general loomed as a large, dark shape, becoming larger and larger in his peripheral vision. Vista stopped in front of him, just eight inches away.

  The major remained at attention, unblinking and unflinching in the face of the general’s proximity, staring straight ahead. Perspiration pooled on his chest and back. His shirt pasted itself against his back.