Her heart skipped a few beats, then seemed to have trouble regaining its rhythm. Much like in her dream, she had a cosmic revelation. It wasn’t the three teens who were gone forever. It was her parents.
“Dang it. I didn’t want to wake up from my dream.” She sat up on the small padded bench.
“I’m sorry,” Donovan drawled, “but you’re going to want to see this.” He stood up and motioned for her to follow him to a corner. “Just peek around.”
When she got there, she saw a scene that might have been from her nightmare.
Audrey and Peter were on the floor together, behind another bench, about twenty feet away. The suspicious side of her wondered if they’d slept there all night, though it didn’t look very comfortable. However they got there, they couldn’t move from behind it or they’d be seen by the investigative white robot floating outside the window.
“How long has it been there?” she whispered.
Donovan took a quick peek around the corner, then leaned closer. “I don’t know. Pete caught my attention. He woke me up. When I came around the bend, I saw it and where it had them.”
She held her bangs to keep them from giving her away, then she looked around the corner again. “It must know we’re here. It isn’t moving.”
“Maybe it’s sent for backup,” he suggested.
Tabby crouched against the wall. “Hey, Audrey. Peter. Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Peter gushed. “What should we do? This thing won’t go away.” Quieter, he added, “It must have seen us.”
She thought back to her dream about getting out of that elevator and seeing Mom and Dad. It seemed so real, and it still lingered in her memory as if it was. It might be the last connection she ever had with them. She put herself back in the dream, desperate to ask Dad what she should do. He always had the answer, no matter the question. How did he do that?
“Tabby?” Donovan sounded worried. “We’ve got to help them.”
“I know.” There wasn’t much she could do about the drone outside, but she could get her people on the move. Keep the tour on schedule. She knew how to push these kids.
“Guys!” she called out to Audrey and Peter. “On three, I want you to run to me. We’re getting out of here before more of those things arrive. Get your stuff ready.”
She stood up again, content she was making the right call. There was no point in waiting if they’d already been spotted. Escaping the building was the priority.
“We’re ready!” Audrey exclaimed.
“One, two…three!”
Tabby peered around the corner, unafraid to be seen. The hovering drone seemed to fight against the wind, but otherwise didn’t leave its position. The black orb underneath was undoubtedly a camera. By the time she’d finished studying the drone, Peter and Audrey came rushing around the corner hand-in-hand.
She waved her arm. “The elevator! Go!” she ordered. The clock was ticking. The drone operator would report movement, more would be sent, and eventually people would show up to capture them. Or worse.
“We have to hurry,” she said with as even a voice as she could muster. Her heart raced beyond her lung capacity, making her take short, uneven breaths. However, she did everything possible to hide her fear.
Peter pressed the button over and over but seemed agitated immediately. When he punched the button with his knuckles, she gently shoved him aside. “What’s up?”
He pointed. “The light isn’t coming on.”
“Shit,” she said quietly. “The power’s out.” There were no lights on in the observation area, but the bright morning sunshine made interior lights unnecessary. If the power was out in the building, the elevators would be out, too.
“The stairs!” she said in a high-pitched voice.
No one remarked on her obvious panic. They went a few paces to the right and opened the fire door to the stairwell. She noticed a knocking sound, a little like a jackhammer, followed by the crash of glass. It couldn’t be coincidence that it seemed to come from around the corner where the drone had been stationed.
“Go! Hurry!”
They all went in; she slammed the door and took a deep breath. The three kids stood on the landing with her, as if afraid of starting down 103 floors and an untold number of steps.
“What are you waiting for?” She expected a drone to tap on the door at any second. Like any good science fiction movie, it probably had heat-seeking equipment to see her standing against the cold, metal slab.
Tabby took the lead and went down the first flight.
The kids soon followed. Donovan caught up to her and went ahead, two steps at a time, which she didn’t mind. He was the sports guy in their group and probably wanted to show off. Peter was the heavy-set kid; he and Audrey lagged behind.
After five minutes, her calves burned. A short time later, Peter lodged the first complaint. “I have to stop,” he chuffed, nearly out of breath.
The boy did have a few extra pounds but didn’t look unhealthy.
“He wants to stop for his girlfriend,” Donovan taunted from a flight below. He kept one hand on his pistol as it sat securely in his police utility belt.
“No, I don’t,” Peter replied in leave-me-alone singsong.
“I’m not stopping,” Audrey interrupted, continuing down the seemingly endless steps. “I can make it.”
After another ten minutes of continuous motion, Tabby wondered if she should make them stop for their own good. Her legs were aching, and her calves felt like they were actually on fire. How were the kids keeping up?
“We’re almost there!” Donovan shouted.
Tabby glanced wearily at the plaque noting the floor number. They were still on the twentieth floor. It didn’t feel close to the end.
She decided to let the athletic boy lead. If no one else was going to halt, neither was she.
At ten floors to go, she had to wobble from flight to flight. Her legs were jelly.
At two floors to go, she leaned heavily on the railing to compensate for her pain. Peter and Audrey lagged a few floors above her, though she saw their hands coming down the railing when she looked up the narrow gap to the floors above.
“We’re there!” Donovan shouted.
She barely heard him over her own footfalls. Each plodding step brought her closer to the end, and she could finally taste it through the pain. At the same time, she couldn’t portray too much weakness, though the struggle made it seem as if she was dying a little inside. Faking positivity was high on her mind as she rounded the last landing and saw Donovan holding the door at the bottom.
“See? We made it,” he said, breathing heavily.
“Yeah, we—” she started to say.
Bursts of red exploded from his chest, followed by the echo of muffled gunshots.
She caught herself on the bannister to stop, though her sweaty palms made her trip down an extra step or two. Leaning forward, she was not more than twenty feet away from her young friend.
Donovan looked right at her with eyes that said, “Tabby, help me.”
He then crumpled against the door, dead.
The shadow of a walking horse-drone appeared in the doorway.
CHAPTER 2
USS John F. Kennedy, south of New York City
Meechum led Kyla deep into the belly of the aircraft carrier, one ladder at a time. The trip through the claustrophobic interior reminded her a lot of the day before, minus the shooting. Most of the empty uniforms were gone, too; Van Nuys had asked the remaining crew to spend every free moment gathering them into piles, out of respect for the deceased. They’d all worked on that until near midnight.
“Where are we going?” Kyla asked for the third time. Meechum had practically pulled her out of the rack, where she’d spent an uncomfortable night of sleep. The hasty wake-up didn’t seem normal, even for the dialed-to-eleven young female Marine, so Kyla remained vigilant for trouble.
She’d kept Carthager’s M9 semi-automatic Beretta pistol in her waistband. It ma
de her feel a little like one of those gangster rappers, but it fit snug and stayed in place, aided by the few extra pounds she could never lose around her midsection.
“We’re here,” the short-haired woman replied while pointing to an open doorway. The Marine went in without further comment, and Kyla followed like she wasn’t quite sure this wasn’t a setup.
A man spoke up. “Over here.”
“Sergeant Carthager?” she replied in a low voice, though no one else was around.
“Take a seat,” he ordered.
She did as requested, mostly because it seemed like she was in a spy movie. She’d been brought all the way down here to talk to a guy who had passed her in the hallways multiple times over the last couple of days. Why he needed her to sneak around to meet him was unknown.
He got right to it. “Listen, we heard what you told the captain yesterday. That it was your uncle down there, and the VP was with him. Are you absolutely sure it was the both of them?”
“I’d bet my life on it. I even texted my uncle on the flight out to confirm.”
“But was it her? You have to be one hundred percent sure.”
Yesterday, she’d had her doubts, but lying in bed gave her plenty of time to reflect on it. The pinned-up hairstyle matched the vice president’s. Same color hair, too. She was about the right height and figure, from Kyla’s recollection from television. Back when her ticket was voted into office, you couldn’t look at a screen without seeing the first female vice president. Uncle Ted’s mission was to fly her plane, so it stood to reason he’d die trying to keep her alive. “I’m one hundred percent, sir.”
Carthager nodded seriously. “Good. I like to see confidence like that.” He passed a look to Meechum, and she took a few steps back before he continued. “Meech and I have talked about this at length, and I don’t see any other way. We have to bring you in on part of our mission. Someone has to get a message to the vice president.”
Kyla chuckled. “Is that why you brought me down here with all this cloak and dagger stuff? I can give you my phone. My uncle and I communicated just yesterday.”
“No, that won’t work. We’re going to use this.” He pointed to a radio sitting on a nearby shelf.
“Why? What’s going on?”
Carthager put one boot on an empty metal chair and peered down at her. “Ma’am, we came on this ship because someone up the chain of command got wind a big event was about to go down. Obviously, that something kicked off before we could report back, but our FAST platoon has been doing its homework over the past twenty-four hours. We now know two things. One, we can’t trust a damned person on this ship. Two, we have to get a message to the vice president, or more people are going to die.”
“Why? Why are they going to die?” she asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” He continued before she could protest. “But it isn’t because I don’t trust you. If you’re captured, they could pry it from you. You’ve got to trust me on this. The enemy is on the ship, and it could be anyone.”
“Even the captain?” she asked lamely.
“Anyone,” he said dryly.
She sat there for a few moments, then peered at the radio. “What do you want me to say to him?”
Carthager rubbed his chin, then motioned for Meechum to go to the radio. Kyla was surprised how much non-verbal communication passed between the two Marines. “We need to know where he is, but you can’t use place names. There will almost certainly be unfriendly ears listening.”
Since she had no realistic idea where he was, it was hard to envision a place she could tell him to go. The last place she’d seen him was in Central Park over twelve hours ago. They could be in Canada by now.
The leader went on. “Once we get him online, I’ll explain how we’re going to do this.”
Meechum invited her to sit at the radio.
She watched as the woman adjusted the frequencies and asked her to call out for her uncle. The first lesson was to use a name only he would recognize, so she had to think it over for a minute or two.
I hope he remembers this.
“This is Reba calling for Hailey-boo, do you have your ears on?” Reba was shorthand for Rebecca, which was Mom’s name, but the nickname also happened to be one of her mother’s favorite singers. It was one of Mom’s many contrasts—the hippy-dippy mother wearing tie-dye dresses singing country songs. Hailey-boo was the name of one of Uncle Ted’s girlfriends; the ‘boo’ was because the woman was terrified beyond logic by ghosts.
Meechum smiled approvingly at her use of the handles. After repeating the call-out a few times, they went to a new frequency. For the next fifteen minutes, they went through the routine until a reply came.
“This is Hailey-boo. Go ahead, Reba.”
Carthager leaned close. “It’s a marine frequency. He might be on a boat or using a boat’s radio. Tell him you’re having a birthday party and need to give him a present.”
Kyla did as instructed. Uncle Ted seemed to understand she was talking in code.
Her uncle’s voice crackled in the radio. “I’ve got a few things going on, but I think a birthday party sounds nice.”
Carthager whispered, “See if you can dial in where he is. Pick a place only he would know, then ask him how many miles he is from it.”
She tried to think, but there was only one spot on her mind. “Hailey-boo, do you remember where we’ve always had birthday parties in the past? How many miles are you from there?”
They waited a few seconds before the reply came back. “We’re about a hundred miles from those birthday parties. We’re also about sixty miles from the place where Hailey-boo’s mother and I took you on your tenth birthday.”
Kyla grinned and spoke quietly to the Marines. “That’s Martha’s Vineyard. It was a big deal because Uncle Ted knew someone in the government who got us a tour.”
Carthager tapped his temple. “It’s an island, right? We can draw a circle around it and see where it meets the circle around the other place. Where was the first location?”
“New York City. Pelham Bay, to be exact. My mom’s house. We always invited Uncle Ted to my parties…” She got a little sad at the memory, though the tough-guy Marine kept talking.
“Right, so he’s a hundred from New York, but only sixty from Martha’s. Any idea where that might be?”
“No,” she replied, “but you said he was on a marine band and might be on a boat. That gives me an idea.”
“Hailey-boo, the birthday party you mentioned. You aren’t by chance using the same type of transportation as we used that day, are you?”
To the Marines in the room, she added, “We took a ferry from New York out to Martha’s Vineyard. It took all day and was the most boring part of the trip, by far.”
“We are, Reba. In fact, we’re a little more than halfway on the same route, if we were going to your tenth birthday party again. I don’t think you’d like how boring it is out here.”
“Yep,” she deadpanned to those around her, “he’s on a boat.”
Carthager let out a sigh of relief. “He’s still alive and on the move. That’s excellent. High marks for your uncle. Now, are there any other places you’ve had birthday parties where we might be able to get to him?”
She had a place in mind right away. “It wasn’t a birthday party, but I did take a field trip he would know about. It was to a lighthouse.”
Off the coast of Long Island, NY
“This is wonderful,” Emily said excitedly. “Your niece is alive, and, it would seem, quite the fighter.”
Emily’s family yacht rocked with the waves. They’d stopped and shut off the motors so no one on the radio would figure out they were on the water. Now, he didn’t want Emily to start it back up until he’d had some time to think it over.
“Yeah, she’s the rebel of the family. Her mom was a pushover. She’d spend an hour to get a fly to exit through the door rather than swat it dead. Up until the past few days, I’d have thought Kyla
was cut from the same material. Now I’ve seen her on a helicopter leaving a warzone, and she’s using coded messages on the radio. I’m impressed, but also worried what she’s gotten herself into.”
“Don’t you trust what she said? This rendezvous at the lighthouse?”
Using coded words only the two of them would understand, they’d agreed to meet at the Montauk lighthouse, which was at the easternmost point of Long Island. She’d gone there on a field trip in middle school, and he remembered it because Rebecca called him the night before asking if it was safe to let her go.
Now there was no question it wasn’t safe.
He looked south, toward shore. The skies were overcast, but the thin slice of Long Island was still visible. He couldn’t make out the lighthouse, but it was there.
“I trust her, but she was being coached. I’m wondering who was there with her.”
“How could you tell?”
Ted had spent enough years in the Air Force to know tones of voice while on the radio. Kyla was nervous and cautious and spoke in monotone, as if reading from a script or repeating what was told to her.
“I’ve known her since she was a baby. As much as I’m impressed with her coding, she couldn’t have come up with it on her own. She couldn’t have found us on this maritime frequency. Not unless she’s been taking a lot of classes down at the learning annex I don’t know about.” He smirked to Emily to offload some of his tension.
“So, we can’t really trust her, but we have to go anyway. Right?”
There was no way he could skip on a chance to collect her. If she was with him, he could get Emily and his niece to safety in Canada. That would be a job well done by anyone’s measure.
He knew what he wanted to do, but she was the president. “You’re driving. What are your orders?”
It was her family’s boat, and she’d driven it before with her husband, so he was content to let her pilot the fifty-foot giant. He stood next to her as she thought about the answer. However, he’d gotten to know her very well over the past two days. Much as he’d done with his friend Frank, he would eat his hat if Emily suggested they leave his niece behind.
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 45