He nodded, his face flushed, and Julie leaned into him and whispered in his ear, “Do you have any rope?”
He nodded again.
“Show me.”
He led her into the bedroom, to a closet, where he had a rack with ties and silk sashes hanging from it. She took a handful and walked to the four-poster bed.
“Lie down,” she said, and he dutifully obliged. She tied his right wrist to the bedpost, and then his left, and then cinched his legs. When he was spread-eagle, she stood and walked to the dining room again.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she called over her shoulder.
She reappeared a moment later with his goblet and the pitcher. “Drink this,” she said, and held it to his lips. He did and, when he was done, sighed. She smiled and returned to the dining room. This time when she came back, she was holding a serrated steak knife.
Elijah’s eyes widened at the sight, and he began to protest, but she cut him off with a finger to his lips.
“No. Not a word. We’re going to have a discussion, and you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or you’re going to be missing one part of your body you seem to use as your brain. Do you understand? You scream, I’ll stuff a sock in your mouth, and then I’ll start cutting. Do you want to be fileted like a trout, or will you cooperate?”
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmare. Now the first question. Where are you keeping Eve?”
Chapter 38
Pacific Ocean, Washington coast
The bow of the Chinese vessel pounded through increasingly rough waves as it battered its way north. The sky had darkened as the afternoon wore on, and was now an endless gray with flashes of lightning in the distance.
The ship had been declared seaworthy by Kirk and Gary, but barely – the electronics were nonfunctional and the steering iffy, even with the emergency repairs to the hydraulics. In spite of the problems, Art had met with the heads of the various factions under his command, and the decision to head to Seattle had been unanimous, if uneasy for some.
Lucas had sat out the discussion, having made his reticence clear to Art and seeing nothing to be gained by belaboring his misgivings. Ruby had, unsurprisingly, felt that finishing off the Chinese in Seattle was the right call, and had recommended guerilla warfare rather than a frontal assault. She’d agreed to stay behind with Rosemary and her family and make her way to Salem with the group that would return with the horses while Lucas and the militia steamed north.
In the end, they’d loaded two hundred animals on the ship and nearly six hundred fighters, who’d augmented their armaments by raiding the mini-arsenal they’d found on the ship. The men were in high spirits at the thought of ridding the country of the invaders once and for all. Henry’s squatters, especially, had been excited at the idea, and even Lucas had caught some of their enthusiasm as the ship had cruised from the harbor and accelerated to twenty-two knots on the open sea.
A search of the superstructure had revealed planning documents for Seattle used by the Chinese command, and a map with areas circled in yellow gave Lucas and Art a good idea of where the enemy troops would be concentrated. Harbor Island appeared on a number of smaller maps, and the downtown and the waterfront had been recurring areas of interest.
Attempts to question the crewmen had proved largely futile; the only one who admitted to speaking some English was the one who’d been manning the bridge when they’d captured the ship. Lucas had instructed him as well as he could to tell the crew that they were to help operate the vessel, and that if any of them tried anything, they’d be summarily executed. Art had put two of his troops over each crewman with orders to shoot if they didn’t cooperate. The Chinese had seemed to understand the threat and, so far, had proved helpful in getting the ship up to speed.
Lucas snatched a catnap for several hours as the big boat motored north, but adrenaline roused him, and he was now on the bridge with Gary, Kirk, and Art’s circle of advisors, who included Sam, Bill, and Henry. Gary was acting as captain, steering using the compass, and watching the temperature, oil, and fuel indicators with a wary eye. Because the autopilot wasn’t working, he was constantly making adjustments – the fifteen-foot rollers from the port side continuously knocked the ship off course, and the wind, gusting to thirty knots, made matters worse.
“How long until we get there?” Henry asked.
“We should be able to make the Salish Sea by eleven or so tonight if our speed stays steady,” Kirk answered, “though sea conditions will play a big part. It looks like we’re headed straight into a squall.”
“How much worse than this can it get?”
“I’ve heard of twenty- to thirty-foot seas farther north. If we get into thirty or bigger, we’ll have to cut power. Even a ship of this size will have a hard time. And with the steering…”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse, then. Seattle’s, what, about a hundred and twenty miles from the mouth of the Salish?”
“More like a hundred and fifty.”
“Then we can get there before dawn?”
“That’s…it depends on visibility. We don’t have radar or GPS, so we’re going to be doing this blind.”
“You have the charts. Can’t you plot a course using those?”
“That’s what we are doing. But it gets hairier in a strait than the open ocean. All we have to do here is avoid running into Washington, so we leave a nice margin from land and we’re fine. If we only have a few miles between two land masses in complete darkness, it’s a lot trickier, so we have to slow down. A ship this size doesn’t just stop on a dime. It could take over half a mile at speed. That’s not a lot of leeway.”
“If we arrive after daybreak, we’ll have to stay out of sight somewhere in Puget Sound until tomorrow night.”
“That might be tough – these engines aren’t exactly quiet. They’ll hear us from many miles off.”
“Is this as fast as it will go?” Lucas asked.
“We’re at eighty percent,” Gary said. “I can probably get us another five without blowing her up, but we can’t run wide open for four hundred miles.”
Art frowned. “Do the best you can. Another couple of knots might make the difference.”
Gary inched the throttles forward and eyed the oil pressure. “That’s about max.”
The sea grew more confused as they proceeded, until they were slamming through twenty-foot waves with breaking whitewater on top. The massive ship shuddered each time it struck one; even its tremendous bulk struggled against Mother Nature’s fury. Rain lashed the decks, and visibility dropped as silver curtains blew nearly horizontal, and the wipers on the glass barely made a dent. The lightning intensified until it seemed they were sailing through a maelstrom, the waves chaotic and coming from every direction, and the steering groaning at the strain of controlling the ship’s course.
“We have to slow down,” Gary said. “We can’t maintain this speed in these conditions.”
“It’s a rough ride,” Art agreed. “But what’s the worst that could happen?”
“We get thrown off course so much we lose time getting back on track. Or the steering breaks and we’re rudderless and can’t control the ship.”
“Okay. We’ll make it up later.”
Gary eased back on the throttles and the vessel slowed, and the banging each time the bow hit a wave became a low-pitched pounding.
When darkness fell, the sea became an oil slick. The clouds blocked any star or moonlight, and it seemed they were moving through ink.
“All right. This is weird,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” Henry agreed. “I can’t see anything.”
“Seems like the seas are settling down some,” Kirk said from where he was plotting their location. “Maybe the cloud cover will thin as we get closer to where we need to make the turn.”
“How accurate you reckon that is?” Lucas asked, indicating the chart.
“More
or less. Problem is there’s no way of getting the speed absolutely accurate in seas like this, so I’m sort of guessing.”
“Guessing?” Lucas echoed.
“I learned this in the navy, but haven’t used it in forever. All the modern boats had GPS.”
“So we’re not completely sure where we are,” Sam said.
“Nothing’s perfect,” Kirk agreed.
“What if you get it wrong?”
Kirk frowned. “Let’s hope I don’t.”
Chapter 39
Denver, Colorado
Julie crept along a girder high above the walkway that connected Elijah’s building to the one where Eve was being kept, her tunic dry after five minutes in the mountain sun. The steak knife was snug against her side, held by the sash she’d improvised from one of Elijah’s, and a Glock 9mm pistol she’d found in his bedside table was clutched in her right hand.
Once he’d told her everything she wanted to know, she’d debated slitting his throat and leaving him for the ants, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she’d forced him to drink the contents of the pitcher, and he’d passed out cold – a state he’d be in for many hours, she was sure.
Her gambit of playing honey trap had worked, and she now knew that Eve was being held in a locked room in Ulysses’s converted theater, with only one guard watching over her. Julie was confident that she’d be able to overcome a guard, who was always a woman, per Elijah, but not so sure she’d be able to escape with Eve without being noticed. Before she’d met him for lunch, she’d told Arnold what she intended to do, and he’d agreed to stand by with their horses a block from the hotel. It had seemed close enough when she’d left, but now, painfully aware of the number of guards and the distance she’d have to cover, it didn’t look so easy, and she’d reconciled herself to the idea that she might have to shoot her way out of the compound.
Julie reached Ulysses’s building and approached a rooftop door at the top of the elevator shaft. She tried the handle and was relieved when it opened. She took the steps cautiously, her sandals silent on the concrete, and paused when she reached the ground-floor landing. Julie pressed her head against the steel fire door and listened and, when she heard nothing, eased it open and peeked through the gap.
According to Elijah, the little girl was being held in what had at one time been a dressing room in the backstage area, which was now the residential wing for the inner circle, with the green room serving as a break area, the dressing rooms converted to bedrooms, and the sundry makeup and wardrobe spaces converted to supply rooms that housed weapons, garments, and the icons, vessels, and Bibles used in the sermons.
The area sounded empty, which was to be expected only a few hours before the big celebration was to take place. Everyone would be at the adjacent convention center, helping with the preparations, hopefully leaving Eve and her guard alone.
Julie had no issue with taking life if she had to. Before she’d joined Shangri-La, she’d been part of a group of travelers who’d had to fight off marauders multiple times, and she’d taken her share of scalps. But it was never easy, and she hoped that she could knock the woman out rather than having to dispatch her, although she wouldn’t hesitate to do what she needed to in order to free Eve.
She inched along the hallway, stopping every so often to listen for signs of life, and reached the turn where Elijah had indicated Eve was imprisoned. Julie peered around the corner and her breath caught in her throat when she saw who was on guard duty. Ellen was sitting on a folding metal chair, a book in her lap, an AK-47 leaning against the wall beside her.
Julie moved so fast that Ellen barely registered her sprinting down the hall, and was grabbing for the AK when Julie collided with her, knocking her from the chair. Julie clubbed her in the head with the butt of the Glock, but it was a glancing blow, and Ellen landed a punch to Julie’s midsection that knocked the wind out of her. Julie rolled off her after Ellen followed up the punch with another to Julie’s chest, and Ellen was reaching for the rifle when the blade of the steak knife plunged into her back.
Ellen screamed in agony and continued to try for the AK, but Julie twisted the knife handle, stopping her. She tried to turn to punch Julie again, but Julie yanked the knife free with a spray of blood and stabbed it through Ellen’s neck, instantly severing her spine.
Ellen collapsed against the floor, her chest working but her mouth slack, and Julie pushed herself away. She looked down at her tunic, which had speckles of crimson dotting the front, and shook her head. Any ideas she’d had about slipping away unnoticed were now impossible unless anyone she encountered was blind.
Julie watched Ellen expire without emotion, and when she was sure the woman was dead, untied the sash and slipped the tunic over her head. She turned it inside out, inspected it, and donned it again. The red stippling was now on the inside, but the fabric was mottled pink on what was now the exterior.
It would have to do.
She crouched by the dead woman and felt for a key, and then exhaled forcefully – the door had a sliding bolt on the outside, not a deadbolt. Julie slid the bolt and opened the door, and looked inside.
Eve was sitting on the floor in the corner in nearly complete darkness, as far away as she could sit from a half-full bucket in the opposite corner in which to relieve herself. Julie’s nose crinkled at the stench, and she knelt down and whispered to the little girl.
“Eve, I’m here to rescue you. Stand up. Are you okay?”
Eve blinked at the unexpected light seeping through the doorway and struggled to her feet. She took several tentative steps and looked up at Julie, relieved.
“Is this real?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Yes. But we’re going to have to be super quiet so nobody hears us, okay?”
Eve nodded and then looked past Julie to where Ellen’s corpse lay splayed on the floor. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything for a moment. When she did, her voice was shaky.
“You’re…Julie. From home.”
Julie managed a smile in spite of the gory circumstances. “That’s right.”
“You have blood on your face.”
Julie wiped at it with the back of her arm, and Eve tilted her head, still watching her. “There’s water down the hall. They let me drink three times a day.”
“Great. Show me,” Julie said, holding out her hand.
Eve took it, and they walked together below what had been the stage. They stopped at a mop sink, and Julie twisted the faucet handle, and a murky stream splashed against the basin. Julie did a hasty cleanup, and then removed her tunic and scrubbed at the blood until it was so faint she could barely see it. She pulled it back on, and Eve stared at her with huge blue eyes.
“You’re all wet and wrinkled.”
“But clean. Now come with me. Remember what I said about staying quiet.”
Eve’s whisper was soft but firm. “Okay.”
Julie snagged the AK as they passed Ellen on the way back, and guided Eve up the stairs to the roof. Once outside, they walked to the edge, and Julie studied the surroundings. The conference center was to the left, and she could see the shaft that had been installed, the workers now nowhere to be seen. Just beyond it was a pedestrian walkway that connected the theater complex with the center.
“Eve, you need to be really brave, okay? It’s safer to use the rooftops to get over to that walkway. Once we’re there, we can run across to the big building and see about getting inside the convention center.”
“I’m not scared. But you don’t want to go in there.”
“Why not?”
“The crazy man said everyone’s going to die tonight.”
“What?”
“He said it’s all part of God’s plan.”
“How?”
“Gas or something.”
Julie’s eyes strayed to the ductwork that the workers had erected, and a chill ran through her. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He just told me that he was doing God’s wo
rk and everyone needs to die.”
Julie scowled at Eve. “Can you wrap your arms around my neck and hold on while I crawl across that glass area?”
Eve looked determined. “I’m not a baby. I can do it.”
“Okay, then let’s give it a try.” Julie slipped the AK strap over her head and adjusted the rifle so it was lying flat against her back, and motioned to Eve. “Climb on.”
Eve did, and Julie began the long crawl along the girders that would take them close enough to the walkway to run for it. She was halfway across the expanse when she froze – two guards were walking toward her four stories below, unaware of the drama playing out above them. They took their time, deep in conversation, and Julie held her breath until they’d progressed beyond where she and Eve were staring down at them.
“That was close,” Eve whispered in Julie’s ear, and it was all Julie could do to keep from laughing out loud at the little girl’s calm.
They made it to the building next to the walkway, and Julie studied the side for obvious handholds she could trust. She found a promising area with steel support beams over the theater entry, and after testing her weight, whispered to Eve, “I’m going to lower myself down those and then jump to the walkway. Whatever you do, don’t let go when I land.”
“Okay.”
Julie completed the maneuver in under a minute and dropped onto the walkway. Eve grunted from the force of the fall, but held on for dear life. Julie smiled at her tenacity. “You can let go now. We’re going to run over there, up those stairs, and across to the convention center.”
Eve slid down, and Julie freed the AK from her back, chambered a round, and looked to the girl. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
They sprinted to the steps and tore up one level to the walkway that crossed the street below. Julie checked to make sure there were no guards in sight, and then they raced across and stopped at the glass doors of the hall. Julie tried one, but it was locked.
The Day After Never (Book 7): Havoc Page 20