“Crap. I can’t make a call either. Must be my phone. Good thing I paid two million for the patent. But my guys know to be waiting for us. My security team is there too, just in case crazy town in the van decides to try and join the party. And that’s one thing a helicopter can’t keep up with: a jet.”
“Is there private security at the gate?” Drop them off there and throw it in reverse.
“That’s why you fly private. No one to ask any questions. OK, there’s an open gate. Nice. Ok, see it? See it there? It’s got the big Q on it. That’s it.”
William did a double take. There, sitting among a few smaller planes on the mostly barren runway, was an enormous Cessna with a giant “Q” painted on its side in a bold red swirl.
“Who the hell are you?” William asked.
The man in the passenger seat grinned. “Just a man who believes, Mr. Chance.”
Drive up, act like you’re getting out, and once he’s out of the car, drive away. You can find another place to leave Lily.
“And as I expected,” Quincy said, looking over his shoulder. “Creeper Van is following us in. So just pull up right to the plane and get inside as fast as you can. I’d call my security again, but obviously my deep financial investment in this certain model of phone has a major flaw. But don’t think this isn’t worth your time, I’ll get the bugs worked out. You’ll want to be on board for this new model. Wait till you see what it can do. Just so you know, I’m packing, but it’s just a pistol. Once my guys see me whip it out, they’ll do the same. No one in that van will think about stopping … wait … wait…”
“What is it?” William asked, hearing the change in Quincy’s voice.
As they drove up to the Cessna, they saw men standing on the stairs leading to the door.
“My guys don’t wear suits,” Quincy said.
As William slammed on the brakes, the men began to run in their direction.
“They’re on my damn plane!”
William saw it, then: the landing skids of a helicopter on the other side.
“Turn around, turn around!” Quincy yelled.
William attempted a U-turn as the now-familiar sound of whizzing and popping resounded outside the car. The Porsche lurched perilously to one side.
“Drive on the rims if you have to!” Quincy yelled.
William grabbed the back of Quincy’s headrest to back up, only to slam on the brakes.
“What are you doing—” Quincy began.
Through the rear window William could see another black helicopter landing, its tail blocking the entrance through the gate.
“Oh shit,” he whispered.
The gray van, which had obviously hesitated as the men in suits rushed from the plane, now bounded across the pavement to drive up directly beside the Porsche.
The passenger side door opened, and a man wearing a ski mask jumped out, carrying a long rifle.
“Aw, come on!” Quincy said, fumbling for his glove compartment. “Who is that?”
The man in the mask yanked William’s door open, motioning with the barrel. “Unless you want to disappear forever, move your ass. Get in the van.”
“What the hell is this?” William asked. Through the windshield, he could see the men in suits were now halfway between the plane and the van.
“Now!” the man yelled, prodding him in the shoulder.
“OK, OK,” William held up his hands, sliding out. Lily scrambled across her seat and opened her door.
“Lily, don’t—”
“Everyone get out of the damn car!” the man yelled. “And drop the pistol, sir. It won’t do you much good against a semiautomatic.”
“Screw you, man,” Quincy yelled. “I’m not—”
Another man wearing a Richard Nixon mask had jumped out of the van’s side door, brandishing a revolver and running around the back of the Porsche.
“Whoa, whoa!” Quincy pointed at the plane. “I’ve got armed security right in that plane—”
“If you haven’t figured it out, your security is worth crap now.” The man in the Nixon mask yanked open Quincy’s door.
William stepped out and Lily immediately embraced him at the waist. “Lily, get back in the car—”
The ski-masked man pushed them towards the open door of the van. “Get inside!”
“Put your hands up and drop your weapons!” a voice from a bullhorn echoed through the air.
The men in suits had stopped, their pistols aimed. “I repeat: Put your hands up where we can see them and drop those guns, or we will have no choice but to open fire.…”
The voice began trailing off.
William realized the girl’s arms were no longer wrapped around him.
As in the cotton field, the men began to fall, one by one. With one hand still clutching his pant leg, Lily had raised her other and pointed. As she swiped across them, the men violently shook and crumbled.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” the man in the ski mask said.
For a moment they stood in stunned silence between the incapacitated Porsche and the van, staring at the unmoving bodies littering the airstrip.
“Let’s go!” yelled a female voice from inside.
“Move,” the ski masked man said. “Move, now!”
He practically shoved William inside but made no move towards Lily. She scampered after in a daze, still holding on to William. The other masked man used his pistol to move Quincy quickly in as well. As they fumbled into the seats, the door slammed shut.
“What just happened out there?” a woman yelled from the driver’s seat.
“Just go! Go!” Even muffled by the ski mask, the man’s voice was clearly rattled.
“Go where?” She was looking back, her mouth covered by a bandana. “The gate is blocked!”
“Ram it. Don’t let them shoot the tires!”
“Do not ram anything!” Quincy said, his hand bracing himself as the van began to spin around. “Whatever you want, I’ll pay it. Just stop and let us out—”
“Shut the hell up!” the ski-masked man said, pointing the rifle inches from Quincy’s face. “Go! Go!”
William leaned over to look out the windshield as the van wildly swerved, a pinging sound cutting through the air.
“Get down!”
The bullets then suddenly stopped as the van headed directly for the helicopter’s tail. The men in suits that had piled out were now scrambling away.
The van made a horrible crunching sound as they smashed into the tail, the helicopter blades still whirling above. The rotor blade came dangerously close to slicing into the roof.
The woman gunned the engine, continuing to push the helicopter. As soon as it had moved far enough, she spun the wheel, and propelled the van forward through the open gate.
“Don’t stop!” the ski-masked man yelled, sliding down the aisle to the back. The back doors of the van flew open, and William watched as he scrambled with something in a metal box and threw it out.
The chain flew out wildly into the air and crashed onto the road. “Hope your tires like that, you fuckers,” William heard him say.
Quincy jammed his hand into his suit coat pocket. “Name your price. Whatever you want, I will pay. Just let us go.”
“Please shut up,” the man in the Nixon man said, pointing his pistol at him. “And get your hand out where I can see it.”
The woman called out from the front. “Rudd, are we heading—”
“You know where to go, Neve. Anyone trailing us yet?” The man pulled off the ski mask, revealing the face William had seen frantically waving at them to pull over on the interstate.
“Not yet. But Rudd, what the hell…”
“Plan B. We go to Plan B right now,” he said.
“Already there,” the man in the Nixon mask said, pulling out a metal box from under the seat. From inside, he brought out plastic bags and threw one to the bald man in the back.
Taking off the Nixon mask, he fumbled with the bag in his hand. For a moment, William
saw a flash of a vial and some thin plastic tubes.
“Wait,” William began. “What are you—?”
The man spun around with such speed that he had the needle in Lily’s leg before William could block him. She gasped in pain.
William leapt forward, grabbing the man’s arm. He ripped the syringe from the man’s hand just as he felt a needle slide into his own arm, followed by a swirl of hot pain.
William swung back, hitting the bald man who had come up from behind. The world immediately began to fade.
“What…” William’s voice slurred.
“What the hell are you doing?” he heard Quincy yell.
“Don’t … hurt…” William fell to the floor.
“Not to worry, Mr. Chance.” The man who once wore with the Nixon mask leaned down, patting his cheek roughly. “Your grandmother gave specific orders.”
FIVE
The rain splintered the view outside the window of the town car, blurring the beginnings and endings of the warehouses. Developers had salivated over the district along the Potomac for years, dreaming of demolishing the old buildings and slamming shiny condos in their place. Yet the industrial stain along the river remained, the owners clutching to their decades-old property deeds that promised sales that would one day pay for beach houses along the Gulf Coast. In cash.
I’ll give them this, Kate thought: It’s a hell of a place to hide.
She tapped her fingers on the armrest, her other hand holding her iPhone, frantically scrolling through her news feed.
“BREAKING: Jeep belonging to William Chance found near home in Little Rock, tires shot out.”
“DEVELOPING: Maintenance crew outside private landing strip at Clinton National Airport report hearing gunfire.”
“TIMELINE: What we know at this hour about the discovery of William Chance—“
Kate leaned forward. “Is it much farther?”
“We’re actually here, Senator,” the driver responded.
She’d had her misgivings even entering the Lincoln town car when it arrived at her townhouse as scheduled. But it had the standard government plates, and the driver flashed a proper security badge. When she questioned the location, knowing that no government agencies were housed that far from DC’s central corridor, the driver had referred to the paperwork delivered to her by a process server containing the official seal with a raised emblem that included the address. It had been signed by the agency’s director, Mark Wolve.
She’d done her due diligence, finding the obscure branch of the FBI in the encrypted database provided to her first thing in the morning. But even in those internal records, it was simply listed as the SSA. Everything checked out, except for the glaring fact that no one had ever heard of it.
The driver came to a stop in front of yet another nondescript warehouse. He stepped out and opened her door, umbrella ready. It was a short walk to a lone metal door. The driver reached out with a key.
A key? That’s the security for a supposedly top-secret agency?
He inserted it into a weary lockbox next to the door. A turn of the key revealed a keypad within. He flashed his security badge at a small screen, punched in a code, and leaned down to do a quick retinal scan. Finally, he placed his thumbprint on the screen. She heard a series of heavy locks release inside.
“I stand corrected,” she murmured.
The small front lobby featured no furniture. A woman wearing a black suit similar to the driver’s sat behind a window, sliding it open without a word. She requested both their security badges, examined them, and made a quiet phone call. She then asked for the umbrella, which the driver provided. She simply nodded towards the only other door in the room. “I can buzz you through—”
“I can handle it.” The driver proceeded to wave his badge again.
“I don’t think the FBI even has this redundancy for security,” Kate said.
“We’re not the FBI, ma’am.”
“According to budget appropriations, you are.”
“Technically, I suppose,” he said, opening the door. “Please follow me.”
Kate’s eyes immediately had to adjust to the darkness of the room beyond, which was lit only by hundreds of computer monitors and televisions that filled the space. The light from the screens revealed intense expressions and wrinkled foreheads.
They passed through without a single employee looking in their direction. Kate slowed her stride to try and see what they were all so intently studying, but when the driver did not, she was forced to keep pace. She did catch a glimpse of what appeared to be the latest video of hurricane damage in New Orleans, with the worker drawing circles on a monitor with a red digital pen.
The driver led her into a small room where a receptionist smiled and nodded. They passed through into a windowless office, lit this time with dim fluorescent lights. No one was sitting at the immaculately clean desk at the far end of the room.
“Am I not to be meeting with Director Wolve?” Kate asked.
The driver walked to the desk and sat down, touching the pad on the laptop to bring it to life. “You are. I’m Mark Wolve.”
“Excuse me?”
He typed quickly, obviously entering his pass code. “Have a seat, Senator.”
“You never thought to introduce yourself?”
“You never asked. You assumed I was the driver. I’ve learned in this life never to assume anything.” He continued to look at the screen intently.
Well played, Kate thought as she sat. Already getting the upper hand by making me look unaware and pretentious.
He reached for the phone. “Terri? Can you send in Mr. Hallow?”
“I was under the impression that we would be meeting privately, Director. I did not—”
“Director, Senator,” said the man walking into the room. The smell of cigarettes preceded him, and Kate felt the all-too-familiar need for a smoke. She’d officially kicked the habit two years ago, but the desire never truly went away.
Yet at the sight of Flynn Hallow, the smell actually repulsed her. The man’s skin had a yellowish tint, and his comb-over barely covered his age-spotted head.
She hadn’t liked him when she kicked him out of her office at the beginning of the year.
“I understand the two of you have met,” Mark said, still reading the computer.
“Yes. I’m sorry it didn’t end well at our last meeting,” Flynn said.
“No, it did not.” Kate rested her hands on her lap.
“But perhaps now you see what I was saying?” Flynn asked.
She eyed him coolly. “My stance has not changed. You asked me to share with the president a series of conspiracy theories—something which I have fought against my entire political career—and in return you promised to find my missing nephew. You not only did not find my nephew—an entertainment reporter did that for you—but I will not clutter the leader of the free world’s desk with unproven fiction.”
“Your mother obviously believed; even your father did at the end—”
“I will not be discussing my family with you or anyone else.”
“Senator, Mr. Hallow,” Mark closed his laptop. “We need to keep this civil. We have a real crisis on our hands over which we’ve got to get control.”
“Get control?” Kate leaned forward, showing the screen of her phone. “I’m sure your phone is lighting up just like mine. I said I would meet with you if you brought in my nephew safely. Obviously, that has not happened. But I’m told now that you have intelligence to share with me. That is the only reason I am here.”
“Let’s get right to it, then. We are afraid he has been taken.”
“Taken? By whom?”
“We don’t know. We suspect some kind of fanatical group.”
“I need facts, Director Wolve, not your suspicions. I am frankly tired of hearing about this agency’s wild suppositions—”
“Perhaps you’d like to see the videos.”
Kate blinked. “Videos?”
The direc
tor turned his laptop to face her. She moved in closer, seeing dark, rapidly moving body camera footage.
“What is this?”
“One of our agents was wearing a camera. Your nephew was living in a trailer on some farmland, and when he snuck back in to gather something inside, we tried to bring him in. He ran from us, and we pursued. You can see at this moment—there—the agent emerges from the cotton—”
“Is that gunfire? Your agents are shooting!”
“He was about to drive away and they shot out his tires. Unfortunately, there was a casualty.”
“Someone died?” Kate’s fist now curled on the desk.
“An accidental shooting. We don’t know who these people were, but a woman and a little girl were seen leaving the trailer with him. By the way, he was also running from them; it appears they were not welcome. The woman moved into our agent’s line of fire and was shot. I am not happy about it.”
“Was my nephew hurt?”
“No. He’s fine, we think.”
“You think?”
Kate heard Flynn clear his throat behind her. Even in the frantic, dark video, she could see that the agent wearing the camera quickly turned to his right. One by one, his colleagues began to convulse and fall.
As that agent whipped his gun back to the Jeep, the camera began to shake wildly, and then both toppled to the ground.
“What’s happening?” Kate demanded.
“Look here,” Flynn walked up and pointed to the corner of the screen. The camera was now still and tilted from where the agent lay unmoving on the ground. From the brake lights of another car, the small figure of the girl was revealed.
“Director, can you flip the video and zoom in?” he asked.
“I already had it edited,” Mark said, reaching around and punching a key.
The video turned and moved in on the girl. She appeared to shake as she looked, one by one, to the agents. The brake lights from the car then fell off her, and she was bathed in black.
Kate watched as headlights then briefly flashed over her. She was still standing and trembling in exertion. A figure flashed in the dark and picked up her up, carrying her away.
“Wait, was that—”
“It was your nephew,” Flynn said.
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