by David Lucin
“Sam!”
Sam swung his head around to see Dylan standing in the bedroom’s doorway.
“We’ve got to move. Let’s go!”
They ran down a hallway and descended a wide staircase. At the bottom, on marble floors, Sam asked, “Is the Major leaving? Are we following him?”
Dylan kicked open the front door. In the driveway, Freddie and Hawerchuk lifted the drone out of the bed of the Toyota. Courtney, helmet on, already had a tablet out and was tapping at the screen. The drone’s four rotors buzzed to life, and the machine rose fifteen or twenty feet off the ground before flying forward and rising into the sky.
With the drone airborne, Dylan finally answered Sam’s question: “It looks like he just abandoned his base. He’s probably riding in the Humvee with Jansen. We’ll stick with him.”
Sam followed him to the truck. “You think he knows we’re watching?”
Dylan rounded the front of the vehicle and climbed in through the passenger door, saying as Sam took his spot behind the wheel, “If he did, he would’ve sent his men after us, not run away. He outnumbers us by three or four to one. He’s probably going to the meet.”
“Didn’t you say only five men per side?”
“I’m not counting on the Major playing fair.”
Courtney, Quinn, and Yannick climbed into the back seat while Freddie and Hawerchuk hopped into the bed. One of them slapped the roof of the truck, signaling they were ready to go.
Sam hit the start button and backed out of the driveway. On the road, he fastened his seat belt and asked, “Where am I going?”
Dylan took the tablet from Courtney and inspected the feed from the drone. “They’re heading west. We’ll trail a mile or so behind.” He switched to the tablet’s map view and zoomed in, then pointed out the windshield. “Head down here. It’ll curve around for a while. At a T-intersection, take a left, then your first right.”
The Toyota lurched forward as Sam slammed his foot on the accelerator. Palms clammy, guts tight and tangled, he followed Dylan’s directions through this gated community of abandoned mansions until he spilled onto a two-lane thoroughfare.
“Wait a sec,” Dylan said, watching the tablet. “Let them get farther ahead.”
Sam’s brain screamed, Drive! They’re getting away! But he suppressed his instinct to recklessly chase after Jenn, wringing his hands on the steering wheel.
“Okay,” Dylan said after an eternity. “Left here, then a right on Westland. But keep it slow. Speed limit at most. If they see us tailing them, it’s game over.”
They wound through suburbs, eventually reaching the Carefree Highway, where Sam kept the Toyota several miles behind the convoy. For the next twenty minutes, they passed westward through an expanse of brown pueblo-style houses accented with reds and oranges. Spindly, leafless trees, dead or dying from lack of water, lined nature strips and decorated medians. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the light hum of the motor, the sound of the tires on asphalt, and Dylan tapping at the tablet. Once, barking echoed in the distance, but that was the only sign of life out here. Northeast Phoenix, gutted and bled almost to death before the bombs, had become a tomb. How many of these homes housed corpses, the bodies of those who died of smoke inhalation, dehydration, disease, or starvation?
Dylan squinted at the tablet. “Whoa, hang on.”
Sam pulled off to the side of the road. There was no way the Major’s convoy could have seen the Toyota, nor could any of his men have spotted the drone; it flew too high to see or hear from the ground. “What’s up?”
“The Humvee and a truck with the enclosed trailer are turning north. The other three trailers are still driving west.”
“That would make sense if they’re headed for Anthem,” Courtney said. “It’s a weird, planned community with only a few ways in or out. Two of them are from the interstate.”
“Where’s the Humvee going, then?” Quinn asked. “And who do we follow?”
Sam kept his foot on the brake. The clock on the dash read 11:20. Forty minutes. Had Liam received Dylan’s message and agreed to go through with the exchange as planned? Would he continue acting as though the Major still had all five of the Militia troops? Maybe he would trade Jenn for five truckloads of food. That sounded like a good deal to Sam. This might not have to end violently.
“Humvee,” Dylan said with certainty. “If Jenn happens to be in one of those trailers, she’s going to the meet, and we can’t show up there unannounced or we’ll freak out the Major. Something tells me she’s in the Humvee, though.” He pinched the screen to zoom out. “Sam, right at the next set of lights.”
He turned up 7th Street, passing a charging station with a Chevy sedan still plugged into one of the stalls. Graffiti covered the tan-brown walls of the abandoned fast-food restaurant on the same lot.
In the rearview mirror, Sam caught a glimpse of Quinn, who sat in the middle between Courtney and Yannick. She tugged at a strand of purple hair. “Guys,” she began. “We’re close to Anthem, aren’t we?”
“Fairly,” Courtney said. “Why?”
“If our people are at the school and we have a drone in the air, shouldn’t we be able to radio them now?”
Dylan lifted his head from the tablet and stared straight ahead. Then, after a few blinks, “Novak, you’re a genius.” He gave her the radio. “Use the command channel. I assume the commander will be at the meet himself. If he answers, tell him we’re in pursuit of Jansen.”
Quinn flicked on the radio. “Commander Kipling, this is Quinn Novak with Dylan Baker. Do you copy?”
No response.
“Commander Kipling,” she repeated. “This is Quinn Novak. Do you copy?”
Sam passed an empty strip mall with a red terracotta roof dotted with solar panels, followed by single-family homes with peaked roofs showing above brown concrete fences. “What’s happening with the Humvee?” he asked Dylan as Quinn tried yet again to reach Liam.
“Still heading north.” Dylan zoomed in. “Wait, it’s pulling into a fire station, I think.”
“Fire station? Is he—”
Dylan jumped like he’d been poked with something sharp. “Stop!”
Sam hammered the brakes. The tires squealed as the Toyota lurched to a halt.
“Easy!” Yannick peeled his forehead off the back of Dylan’s seat. “You trying to give us all whiplash?”
“What is it?” Sam asked, ignoring Yannick’s complaint.
“I see her,” Dylan said. “Jansen.”
Sam snatched away the tablet. It took him a moment to find the fire station in the sea of red-roofed houses around it. The Humvee and Tesla pickup had pulled into an adjacent parking lot, and three distinctly human shapes were walking toward the front door. From this altitude, Sam couldn’t make out many details, but one of the three had what looked like a bag over his head. No, her head. It was Jenn. Sam could tell by her gait and the way she jostled with the figures holding her arms.
He touched his finger to the flexi-glass, to Jenn, keeping it there until she disappeared inside. Trailing behind her was another figure. Four others surrounded him, and Sam intuitively knew that he was looking at the Major.
His vision went red. Seething, he dropped the tablet into Dylan’s lap and put both hands on the steering wheel, ready to drive, but the radio crackled, and a man’s voice broke through the static: “Novak, Kipling here. What’s your status?”
20
Pressing in his earpiece, Liam turned his back to the Anthem school, a structure done in the motif he always associated with the desert: a brown rock facade with Sedona red on the roof. In front of him stood a pile of boxes and bins, all full of food for the Major. An American flag, half-staff and faded, flapped in a light breeze. He arrived with three trucks and three trailers an hour ago, and after the supplies had been unloaded, he sent all but one truck and four Guard troops away.
“Commander,” Baker responded via radio, taking over for Quinn Novak. “We’ve tracked Jansen and
who we believe to be the Major to a fire station southeast of Anthem.”
Liam fought the urge to cheer and wore his best poker face, which was hard, because when he used to play cards with the officers in his battalion, they could easily tell the strength of his hand by the size of his grin. Although Townsend’s aerial reconnaissance of the area had shown nothing suspicious, Liam was operating under the assumption the Major’s men were hiding inside the school and were watching him now.
“Copy that,” he said, covering his mic to keep his voice from traveling. “We’re waiting on our counterparts to show up. Is it your recommendation that I abort?” He stopped short of explaining that Townsend’s platoon, in trucks and armed with both LCDs, were in positions two kilometers to the north, prepared to descend on this school in a blitzkrieg if anything went wrong. The Militia’s radio frequencies were encrypted, making it highly unlikely anyone was listening in on this conversation, but he opted to play it safe, just in case.
“Negative. We’re close enough that the Major is likely in radio contact with his people, so we don’t want to raise any alarm.”
One of the Guardsmen—Corporal Horvat, a large man with a caterpillar for an eyebrow—mouthed something that might have been, Is there a problem, sir? Liam gave him a thumbs-up and eyed the school. Still no movement in any of those windows. Yet he couldn’t shake the sense that he and his team weren’t alone.
“You’ve got three trucks and trailers inbound,” Baker continued. “Last we saw, they were headed for the interstate. Should be there in five, ten tops. We’re moving into positions to make a move for Jansen now. I’ll keep you posted. Baker out.”
Liam filled his cheeks with air and let it out in short puffs. Everything was coming to a head. He wished his recon drone had enough charge to give him eyes in the sky, but after Townsend used it to scout the school, its battery fell to critical levels and had to be grounded. Baker would need his own drone to carry out Jenn’s rescue. In the Army, Liam had been spoiled with satellites, Internet, cellular networks, and drones of all shapes and sizes. How did anyone command military forces prior to the communications revolution of the 1990s and 2000s?
His four troopers—three men and a woman—watched him like puppies waiting to be fed, except they were waiting for an explanation. Liam would love to give them one, but he couldn’t risk sharing details aloud. “Carry on,” he said instead, but none of them loosened up.
According to his wristwatch, six tense minutes passed before a line of three trucks pulling five- or six-foot-long utility trailers appeared on the road running past the school. He spied a passenger and a driver in the lead truck. Seeing two men in the second and third vehicles as well didn’t surprise him. The Major had made clear that five per side would be permitted at the exchange, so he’d already broken his own rule. Now Liam was positive that others were watching him from the school’s windows.
“Play it cool,” he said to his troops. “Apparently the Major’s decided to alter the terms of this meet without informing us, but we go ahead as planned. You got it?”
“We got it, sir,” Horvat answered for the group.
The trucks pulled into the parking lot and stopped between the school and the heap of supplies. Almost in unison, six doors opened and a half dozen men climbed out, all with semiautomatic rifles. A few rear doors flung open as well, and out came three more men and a woman. Ten in total—double the agreed-upon number.
A man with a faded black baseball cap, blue hooded sweatshirt, and tattered jeans sauntered forward, an AR across his chest. He sported a brown beard with spots of gray in the chin. His face was gaunt, almost skeletal, with deep-sunken eye sockets. “Mr. Commander, I presume?”
Immediately, Liam recognized his voice. “That’s right. I believe we spoke on the radio yesterday.”
“That we did.” Brown Beard patted the stock of his rifle as he approached the stack of supplies. “The Major regrets he couldn’t be here today and sends his best regards.”
“How nice,” Liam said, less than shocked that the Major himself hadn’t shown up. He’d had the man pinned as a coward from the start. “I must not have gotten the memo we were allowed ten men each. Should I be calling in some backup to even out the numbers?”
“Won’t be necessary. We shouldn’t be here long.” Brown Beard gave a black plastic bin a light kick with his boot. “This all of it?”
“Five truckloads. I hope you don’t mind, but we took the liberty of unloading it and driving our vehicles out of here. No offense, but I didn’t trust you not to take them, too.”
“None taken, Mr. Commander.” Brown Beard popped open the bin’s lid. From this angle, Liam couldn’t see inside, but he knew it was full of potatoes. “You sure this is five truckloads? It doesn’t look like much.”
Doesn’t look like much? There’s tens of thousands of calories here. “Then maybe your boss should’ve been more specific. Truckload isn’t exactly an internationally recognized unit of measurement like, I don’t know, kilograms or cubic meters.”
“You’re right about that.” Brown Beard checked inside another bin. “I suppose we’ll take your word for it.”
“Thank you,” Liam said sarcastically and considered his next words carefully. Brown Beard would expect him to ask about his people, but he couldn’t betray that he knew of their whereabouts. He also had to stall for time and give Baker an opportunity to rescue Jenn. After some thought, he settled on simply asking, “So where are my troops?”
Brown Beard was counting the boxes, pointing at each one and muttering to himself. Liam was happy to let him continue uninterrupted, unless he was stalling as well. For what, Liam couldn’t fathom. He compulsively checked on the school, but all remained quiet, the only movement the fluttering of the American flag.
When Brown Beard was finished, he said, “Your people are fine. Once we load the supplies and get a safe distance away, they’ll be delivered to the roadblock.”
So that was the Major’s plan: drive the food out of here and then never deliver the captives. It might have worked if he really had all the captives. Liam feigned annoyance. “That wasn’t part of the deal. Your boss’s message made clear the exchange would happen here, at this school.” He could have said more but reeled himself in. He didn’t want to antagonize Brown Beard too much, just enough so the man would believe he was upset.
“I’m sure you understand why it has to happen this way, but in case you don’t, let me spell it out for you. If we hand over your people now, there’s nothing stopping you from running down our vehicles and taking back your food. When we’re confident we aren’t being followed, we’ll complete the transaction.”
Liam wore a thin, humorless smile and shook his head, thinking, Hurry it up, Baker. “You expect me to trust you after you ambush five of my troops and kill one of them? Seriously?”
Brown Beard made a popping sound with his lips, then glanced at the school. Liam still didn’t see anyone in the windows, but that gesture seemed an awful lot like some sort of signal. To be safe, he held his hand toward the troopers behind him, telling them to remain calm.
“The thing is, Mr. Commander,” Brown Beard said and kicked away a stone, “you don’t really have much room to negotiate here.”
Only then did Liam notice the red dot on the tactical vest he’d borrowed from Murphy. He couldn’t find the origin, but he assumed it was the school. Similar red dots appeared on the vests of two of his Guardsmen.
A twinge of fear stabbed his ribs, but it soon faded. In this parking lot, the Major’s men might outnumber the Militia by a factor of two to one, plus the riflemen in the school, but Townsend’s platoon tipped that numerical disparity far in the other direction. Brown Beard must know the Militia had additional forces nearby, hence why he now felt it necessary to threaten Liam’s life. The man was playing his final card.
Liam had to act put out, though, lest Brown Beard begin to think, rightly, that he’d lost the upper hand. “Whoa there,” he said and lifted his ar
ms in a sign of surrender. “No need to crank the escalation dial up to a hundred like that. All I want is to see my people. How about a proof of life? Can you give me that much?”
“You’ll see them when you see them, Mr. Commander. For now, you’re gonna have to trust me when I tell you they’re fine.”
If nothing else, Brown Beard was a good liar, and he did a superb job of keeping up the charade. “All right then,” Liam said and slowly lowered his arms. “I’ll just make my way out of here and let you pack up. I look forward to seeing you, with my people, at the roadblock soon.”
He began to back up, but Brown Beard waved a finger, saying, “Nice try, but you’re not going anywhere until we’ve loaded up and are safely on our way.”
“So now you’re taking us hostage, too? I’m beginning to wonder if this is an exchange and not a simple robbery.”
Brown Beard’s mouth twitched. Was he holding in a smirk? “That depends. If you cooperate, it’ll all be fine. If not, your Militia’s gonna be picking a new leader tonight.”
Liam could almost smell the anger and frustration wafting off the troops behind him. He felt the same way, but what else did he expect from the Major? “I guess you give me no choice.”
“That’s the spirit,” Brown Beard said. “Now, how about you get those hands in the air so you’re not tempted to do anything stupid?”
With some reluctance, his blood running hot, Liam complied, then made sure the others did as well.
As eight men and one woman began loading the boxes of food into the trucks and trailers, he glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes had passed since he last spoke to Baker. At what point should he begin to worry that the plan to rescue Jenn had failed?
* * *
Sam followed Freddie up a set of stairs in a two-story house across the street from the fire station. At the top, he turned right down a hallway, passed a bathroom, and then slipped through an open door, entering an empty bedroom. Freddie kept low and crouched on one side of the window, while Sam crouched on the other.
After watching Jenn being taken into the fire station, Sam had continued north and parked a few blocks away. The team proceeded the rest of the way on foot, searching for a good vantage point and staging area. Freddie suggested this house. It was one of few in the neighborhood that hadn’t been boarded up, and this bedroom overlooked the fire station’s front entrance, a row of office windows, and the Humvee and Tesla pickup outside. If the Major and his men tried to escape, Freddie would, hopefully, be able to put them down.