Above

by Roland Smith

  Carl got up from the table. “Forget it. Collateral damage. I better get back to my watch.”

  Bella, Bill, and now Carl. They owed me. I’d get information from them if I didn’t push too hard. Simple questions.

  “So, do you sleep during the day?” I asked.

  He turned back to me. “When I work graveyard, yeah.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “In one of the rigs. Lod tells me where I’m going to bunk. There’s a bunch of us running security. Day and night shifts.”

  “You prefer nights?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me, but nights are quieter because we’re parked. During the day Lod runs the show from a helicopter. A lot of driving, running ahead, hanging behind, countersurveillance. You know the drill.”

  I did know the drill — it was the same thing we had done in New York when we had business above, although we did it on foot. I had suspected Lod was watching from a helicopter, or an airplane, but this confirmed it.

  He must have all the vehicles marked. Probably a number on the roof, or perhaps a color, or …

  Suddenly I remembered something from one of his notebooks. A sketch. I didn’t know what it was at the time. It was a series of rectangles, one in front of the other, between two parallel lines. The rectangles had numbers in the lower right-hand corners.

  “What are you smiling about?” Carl asked.

  I hadn’t realized that I was smiling. “I was just thinking about some of the runs we made above.”

  “Good times,” Carl said, and disappeared back into the fog.

  “Time to wake up, Meatloaf.”

  I opened my eyes.

  Coop was sitting on the bench seat looking down at me.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  I barely remembered climbing into the boat. “Good. I think.”

  I sat up.

  It was foggy out.

  The sun was up.

  I looked at my watch. 7:22.

  “Alex wants to get on the road. There was a Pod member camped here. Small Airstream trailer being pulled by a red truck. We walked past it last night.”

  I didn’t remember seeing it. My brain was as foggy as the campground.

  “Alex heard them on the radio. They just pulled out. He wants to get in front of them.”

  I quickly rolled up my sleeping bag and pad and stuffed them behind the front seat of the truck before getting behind the wheel.

  Alex slid open the window between the camper and the cab. He had on a pair of headphones. He must have picked them up the night before when he was out getting the camper.

  He pulled the headphones down around his neck. “They’re on the move. A lot of chatter. Larry must be in the air already. You okay to drive?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll hang back here. See if I can’t ID a few more of their vehicles.”

  “I’ll ride up front with Pat,” Coop said.

  “First you need to help me back the boat out of here.” I looked at Alex hopefully. “Unless you want to dump the boat here?”

  “Not yet. If I think Larry is paying attention to a camper pulling a boat, we’ll get rid of it. From what I’ve been able to overhear, he’s having his countersurveillance team check out vehicles he has suspicions about. You guys will need to put on your disguises, such as they are. If a car drives up alongside you to get a closer look, try not to look back at them and be cool. You’re just a couple of guys in a camper heading home after a fishing trip.”

  What we were was a couple of guys who didn’t have the first idea how to back up a trailer. It took me a half a dozen tries, scraped paint, and a severely dented trailer bumper, which we had to pull away from the tire. I finally figured out that Coop was worthless at giving directions, and that the best way to back up a trailer was to go slow, use the side mirrors, and follow the trailer.

  Finally we were back on the highway, heading south.

  It was a much quieter ride with Alex back in the camper, listening on headphones, than it had been the day before. As usual, Coop was fast asleep before we hit the highway.

  I climbed down from the ladder leading to the roof of the motor home. Sixteen had been painted onto the bottom right-hand corner of the roof just like the sketch in Lod’s notebook. Our motor home was number sixteen. So there were at least sixteen vehicles heading south.

  Bella was over at the camp restroom taking a shower. She hated the small shower in the motor home. Bill was checking the engine oil. I had watched Lod pull out of the park at dawn. At least I thought it was him. Three cars. Two people in each car. Half an hour later other coaches began rolling out of the park at ten- or fifteen-minute intervals. Lod’s big motor home had pulled out while I was on the ladder checking the roof. LaNae was behind the wheel. I saw that she had cut her hair very short. She didn’t even look my way as she rolled past.

  Bella walked across the street drying her hair with a towel.

  “Ten minutes,” she said to Bill. “Looks like we’re driving middle of the order today.”

  We climbed inside. I sat in the back. Bella and Bill sat up front.

  “Okay, sixteen,” Lod said over the radio.

  We pulled out of the campsite.

  Langlois.

  Sixes.

  Town after little town.

  Either I was getting better at driving, or the camper was easier to drive than the car, which didn’t seem likely. I was feeling so confident behind the wheel that I managed to pass a car and merge back into my lane without smashing him with the boat.

  Alex poked his head through the window. “Nicely done,” he said.

  “No big deal.”

  “I think they’re going to blow by you up ahead on that straight stretch.”

  “How do you know that?” I looked at the car in the side mirror. It was still a long way back, puttering along.

  “Watch.”

  Sure enough the car started to pick up speed as we approached the straightaway.

  “Keep it at fifty-five,” Alex said, like he was reading my mind. “It’s not a race. Eyes on the road.”

  The car passed us going at least seventy-five and disappeared behind a rise in front of us.

  “Okay,” I said. “How did you know that slowpoke was going to pass us?”

  “Spotter car. Countersurveillance. He was told to check us out, saw nothing, and moved on. The FBI don’t tail people in campers pulling boats, although they should give it a try. It’s good cover.”

  “So we’re safe,” I said. “They won’t be checking us out again.”

  Alex laughed. “On the contrary. I figured out some of the code they’re using. Larry is up in the air managing this run like an orchestra conductor. I think we’ve somehow ended up in the middle of the pack, rigs to the south, rigs to the north, the spotters moving ahead, hanging back, all under Larry’s direction. There’s a viewpoint in about three miles. Pull into it. We need to do some touristy things on the way so Larry doesn’t get suspicious.”

  We were on a stretch of highway hugging the Pacific. Blue sky with a few cottony clouds above the horizon. I pulled into the viewpoint. Another car and a motor home were already parked there, windshields toward the ocean. From the back Alex asked about the vehicles. He couldn’t see them from where we were parked. I described them.

  “Do you recognize the car?”

  “Not really. It isn’t the car that passed us. Looks like there’s a man and a woman sitting in the front. Maybe some kids in the back.”

  “What about the motor home?”

  “White. Class C.”

  “Plates?”

  “I can’t see them clearly. I think they’re California plates.”

  “We need to start a database of some of the plates we see. Cross off the ones we know aren’t Pod.”

  “Want me to jump out and get the number?”

  “Sure, but don’t act like you’re getting the number. Act like you’re checking the boat or taking in the view. Take the binoculars to
make it look good. If you have a hood on your jacket use it.”

  I put up my hood and grabbed the binoculars. I glanced at Coop. He was sound asleep, dead to the world. I closed the door quietly, not that slamming it would have disturbed him.

  I was glad I had my hood up. It was colder than it looked.

  At least it looked like Pat.

  How do you look at someone without appearing like you’re looking at them?

  Bella was lying on the narrow floor next to the sofa, trying to do yoga. Bill was squeezed into the tiny bathroom loudly brushing his teeth. He’d always been fastidious about his teeth.

  I was sitting on the sofa staring out the window. A few minutes earlier Lod had radioed in, telling everyone to stop. Bella said he did this every once in a while and that there was no cause for alarm. He’d observe the stationary caravan for potential threats, then have everyone start out again.

  I couldn’t see Pat’s face clearly under his hoodie, but I knew it was him by the way he moved, the hunch of his shoulders, the splay of his feet as he walked.

  Where did they get a camper?

  He had a pair of binoculars around his neck. He walked around the back to the boat they were towing.

  Where did they get a boat? Why did they have a boat? Had they gotten my notes? Did Pat know he was parked right next to me? Where did he learn to drive? Where were Coop and Alex?

  My head whirled with shock, joy, and fear.

  Get your game face on! I told myself. Don’t blow this.

  I needed to let him know I was here without drawing attention to him. It had to be handled with finesse.

  I turned away from the window and looked down at Bella. “Awkward place to do yoga,” I said.

  “You’re not kidding. I’d ask you to join me, but there’s barely enough room for the mat. I can’t manage a tenth of my poses.”

  I had done yoga with Bella since I could walk. Daily yoga practice and jujitsu were required discipline for all Shadows. I hadn’t done either since I escaped from the Deep. I missed them. Another thing to add to my list. Dogs. Yoga. Brazilian jujitsu.

  “How’d you and Bill end up with the small motor home?”

  Bella laughed. She was in a half-tortoise pose with her forehead on the floor and her arms stretched out above her head. “You think this is cramped? You need to see some of the other rigs. LaNae is driving Lod’s rig today, but she’s usually driving a clunker of a car, pulling a tent trailer. As you can imagine she hasn’t been too happy about that. Her car broke down yesterday. Lod had her leave it where it was. I think she sabotaged it.”

  Like everyone else in the Pod, Bella was not a big fan of LaNae Fay.

  “Wouldn’t put it past her,” I said, stretching my arms above my head.

  Bella came out of her tortoise pose in slow motion with complete control, showing off her strength. I wanted to burst through the door and run outside, but I couldn’t help but be amazed at her fitness. I didn’t know how old she was, but she had to be in her midsixties.

  “Lod assigned the rigs,” she continued. “Not sure what the formula was, but you know him, there’s a reason for everything he does. Probably took him months to figure it out in that little notebook of his. But it seems to be working well. We have twenty-two vehicles on this route. Not one of us has been pulled over by the cops. He doesn’t let us drive at night, so we’re alert during the day. Also, there’s more traffic during the day.”

  “The best place to hide is in a crowd,” I said. One of the many Shadow mantras. I stretched out my legs like they were stiff and sore. All this was taking too long. If I didn’t get outside soon, Pat might be gone.

  “I forgot to ask,” Bella said. “How’d you sleep last night?”

  “It got a little stuffy in here. I got up and went outside for some fresh air. Other than that I slept fine.”

  A lie. I hadn’t slept at all. I’d spent most of the night thinking about Lod’s little notebooks.

  “I didn’t hear you get up.” Bella went into the cow pose. “Bill and I sleep like the dead.”

  The noisy dead.

  “How long do you think we’ll be stopped here?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. If you want to go out and stretch your legs, go ahead.”

  Finally. The trick was to get them to suggest something, rather than having to ask.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I caught myself a millisecond before calling out to her. I had been scanning the ocean with the binoculars when she stepped out of the motor home. We were less than fifty feet away from each other. She didn’t even glance in my direction, but I knew that she recognized me. She picked up a stick and wandered over to the far side of the viewpoint and sat down on a bench. If Coop opened his eyes and saw her now, I wasn’t sure what he would do. I started back to the camper, moving slowly, which is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I wanted to sprint. When I got to the door, I opened it casually, got into the driver’s seat, and closed the door quietly.

  Coop was still asleep.

  Alex had his binoculars out, zeroed in on Kate through the windshield.

  “Don’t worry,” he said without removing the binoculars. “They can’t see me back here through the dark cab. You handled her appearance perfectly.”

  “Did you know she —”

  “No,” Alex interrupted. “But we were bound to run into a Pod member face-to-face eventually. In fact, we probably already have and didn’t know it. I just didn’t think we’d bump into Kate.”

  “I should have stayed out there. I thought she recognized me, but maybe she didn’t.”

  “She recognized you all right. She must have seen you from inside the camper. See where she’s sitting? It’s a blind spot. They can’t see her from the camper. I doubt they saw you either. Once a Shadow always a Shadow.”

  “What about Shadows?” Coop asked, suddenly wide-awake.

  Alex reached through the little opening and grasped Coop’s shoulder.

  “Don’t freak out,” I said, pointing through the windshield.

  “Kate!” Coop sat straight up and reached for the door handle, but Alex held him firmly in place. “Does she know we’re here?”

  He didn’t take his eyes off her as I told him about my close encounter.

  “No one is watching her,” Coop said. “Let me see your binoculars.”

  “Not a good idea,” Alex said. “They can’t see me sitting back here, but they might catch you through the windshield.”

  “What should we do?” Coop whispered. I’d never seen him so anxious before.

  “Nothing,” Alex answered. “We’re going to sit tight until they leave. Kate appears to be doing just fine. She obviously has some freedom.” Alex laughed. “I wonder what she told them to explain her sudden appearance at Nehalem Bay. It had to have been a very convincing whopper, or she wouldn’t be wandering around on her own.”

  The door to the motor home opened. Bella stepped out. She said something we couldn’t hear. Kate got up from the bench and headed back toward the motor home. Bella smiled and said something. Kate returned the smile and held the door open. Bella stepped inside and Kate followed, but just before she shut the door behind her …

  We watched them pull out of the viewpoint and head south.

  “Did you get the plate number?” Alex asked.

  After I spotted Kate, I had completely forgotten why I had gotten out in the first place. “Sorry, I —”

  “Just kidding,” Alex said. “I caught it when they pulled out.”

  “We better get going before they get too far ahead,” Coop said.

  “No hurry. We’ll be able to catch them easily. And we don’t want to follow too close. Is anyone else parked here?”

  I looked. The car that had been there was gone. “Just us.”

  “Coop, why don’t you wander over to that bench she was sitting on and see if she left us anything.”

  Coop opened the door.

  “Slowly,” Alex warned. “Larry has eyes everywhere.
Put your hood up. Sit there for a couple of minutes before coming back.”

  A few minutes later Coop got back into the cab.

  “Well?”

  “She left us another note, but I didn’t read it. I didn’t want to take a chance of someone seeing me.” He fished the note out of his pocket.

  We are #16. Numbers on top of rigs. I think we have 22 vehicles in this group now. There might be another group. Lod is flying in a helicopter, watching and directing. Security very tight. They use two-ways and CBs to talk in code. You need to be careful. I’ll leave notes when I can. We stop every night to rest and travel during the day. I don’t know where we’re going … yet. They don’t trust me … yet. But I am safe for now. I have spoken to Lod. He thinks you are all a long way from here. Do not approach us. You will be caught. Hello to Coop. I want a dog. Love, Kate.

  “A dog?” I asked.

  “Kate loves dogs,” Coop answered.

  “We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing,” Alex said. “Providing they stay on the coast road, I should be able to figure out where they’re going to spend the night. We’ll have to be very careful. They’ll probably have people everywhere keeping an eye on vehicles flowing south with them.”

  “Guess we should dump the boat,” I said.

  Alex shook his head. “Not sure about that yet. There’s a chance that Larry has ID’d our camper, boat or no boat. If he has, and he sees we’ve gotten rid of the boat, he’ll want to know where and why. He’ll send in spotters to find out. If they get a close look at us, we’re dead. If he had been flying over when Pat bumped into Kate we’d already have a spotter on us taking a closer look. We’re behind enemy lines now.”

  “Almost forgot,” Coop said. “There was something else with the note.”

  He pulled a paper towel out of his pocket.

  Wrapped inside were three cookies.

  the sign read as we crossed the border into California.

  Bella came back to replenish Bill’s coffee cup.