Escape The Dark (Book 4): Caught In The Crossfire

by Fawkes, K. M.

  And even if he doesn’t, he’ll never let me see Ella again. He’ll keep her locked up on his base, constantly under guard, and I’ll never be able to get her away.

  Adam felt desperate, and his own desperation scared him. Had he ever really been sure that Thompson would set off the nuke? Or had he only convinced himself of that because he was so determined to get Ella away? It had seemed like the only way. It still seemed like the only way.

  But maybe Adam had let himself believe that trusting Thompson was the smartest course of action.

  He had told himself over and over that he wasn’t putting all his trust in Thompson, that he was going along with the plan but also holding the man at arm’s length.

  But what if I’m just being used? What if Thompson figured out that I would do whatever it took to get Ella to safety? What if he never planned on setting off that bomb?

  Adam steeled himself. It doesn’t matter. What did he care about California’s status as an independent state? What did he care if Knight was weakened by appearing to give in to terrorist demands? None of that had anything to do with him. The only thing Adam could afford to care about was himself.

  I need to get myself to safety. I need to get Ella to safety. After that, let them fight it out. I don’t give a damn.

  He would get Ella out of New Edwards, and they would make a run east, past the mountains, beyond the range of the nuke. Then it wouldn’t matter whether Thompson’s threats had been idle or genuine. Adam and Ella would be safe.

  Chapter 18

  Knight sat back in his chair and made a study of his hands. After a while, he looked up.

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “I am?” Adam had never felt less right about anything in his life. He was confused, scared, spooked to hell. What did Knight mean?

  “You’re right that I can’t just send you back there to tell him no,” Knight said. “It’s far too risky. Thompson is unstable, and he might actually set that bomb off. I suppose you’re sure that he really does have it?”

  Adam nodded. “I saw it. I mean, I’ve never seen a nuclear weapon before, but it looked pretty real to me.”

  Knight nodded. “Then we have to assume he’ll be willing to detonate it,” he said. “I can’t try to call his bluff. Not when the stakes are that high.”

  Adam felt a massive wash of relief. “Then you’re going to allow Californian independence?” he asked. That was all Thompson wanted. If Adam could take that news back, he would be able to free Ella and her sister from the base. The three of them, along with Julie’s son, would be able to run away together. And if that nuke ever did go off, for whatever reason, Adam and the people he cared about could be far away.

  “No,” Knight said. “We can’t do that either.”

  “What?” Adam felt like his throat was constricting. “But you just said—”

  “I said we couldn’t call his bluff. But I also said I wouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, and I meant it.”

  “What other options do you have?”

  “We’re going to have to take the base.”

  Adam frowned. “You mean take it as in capture it? By force?”

  “I see no alternative,” Knight said. “At this point, General Thompson is behaving like a hostile government. The only thing we can do in this scenario is to remove him from power. Then we can get some of our people in there to dismantle that bomb, hopefully, and this whole problem will go away.”

  “No,” Adam said. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why can’t we?” Knight narrowed his eyes. “Are you protecting them after all?”

  “No, it isn’t that,” Adam said. “I don’t care what happens to them. But there are thousands of them, Mr. President, and they’re astonishingly well equipped. They have vehicles that run.”

  “We have vehicles that run.”

  “Okay, but they have far more men than you do,” Adam said. “If you send in an armed force, it’s going to lose, unless you’ve been concealing some kind of massive army down here.”

  “No,” Knight admitted. “I haven’t. We have our ground patrols, but nothing like the numbers you’re describing.”

  “And you also have to remember that he has that nuke at his disposal,” Adam said. “He was, allegedly, prepared to use it if you sent me back with a ‘no,’ so what do you think he’s going to do when he sees an army at the front door? He’ll run down there and set it off before you have the chance to do a damn thing.”

  “You’re right,” Knight said. “We’re going to have to use a more subtle tactic to gain an advantage over General Thompson.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Adam was anxious that whatever Knight was thinking of doing would put Ella at risk. But how can I tell him that without setting off his worries about my loyalties? If I tell him I’m trying to protect someone at New Edwards, he might think I’m trying to protect Thompson himself.

  “We need to send in a Trojan horse,” Knight said. “We need to disguise our attack so that Thompson won’t recognize it for what it is until it’s too late.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  Knight met Adam’s gaze. “I need you to assassinate him,” he said.

  The words were delivered so casually that for a minute Adam thought he must have misunderstood. “You want me to do what?”

  “It’s not a matter of wanting,” Knight said. “Thompson is expecting you to come back, Mr. Parkhead, so he won’t find it at all suspicious when you do. You’re the only one who can infiltrate his base without arousing suspicion, in fact. And once you do, you’ll be able to gain access to him and kill him, preventing him from setting off the bomb.”

  “That’s crazy,” Adam whispered. “That’s absolutely insane.”

  “Is it?”

  “Even if I could do what you’re suggesting, which I can’t—”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because he’s armed and I’m not,” Adam said. “Because he’s surrounded by guards. Because he’s a trained member of the US Military, and I’m just a washed-up actor. Take your pick.”

  “We can arm you,” Knight said.

  “And I suppose you don’t think he’ll find that suspicious at all?” Adam shook his head. “Besides, anything you give me is going to be found long before I make it back to the base. The soldiers who brought me here are going to check me as soon as I get back to them to make sure you didn’t wire me with explosives or something.” A horrible thought occurred to him. “That’s not what you were going to do, is it?”

  “Of course not,” Knight said. “There’s no need for you to lay down your life.”

  “You don’t think so? Because if I did manage to kill Thompson, the thousands of soldiers in his militia would definitely shoot me as soon as I walked out of his tent.”

  “We would protect you,” Knight said. “Your safety would be our number-one priority.”

  “How are you going to send me in alone and still protect me? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “We would send an army in after you,” Knight said. “We wouldn’t be able to attack until you signaled to us that Thompson was dead, of course, but without their leader the militia would be in a state of disarray. They wouldn’t know who was giving orders or what they should do. At that point, we would be able to overwhelm them with ease.”

  “It’s still a bad plan, Mr. President,” Adam said. “Even if you could overwhelm the militia—which, forgive me, but I think is far from a sure thing—I would almost certainly be killed, and the people who are being held captive there wouldn’t be safe either.”

  “Are you saying you won’t do this for us?” Knight raised his eyebrows.

  Adam swallowed. It’s not going to look good if I agreed to go on Thompson’s mission for him but I won’t agree to go on Knight’s. It’s going to look as if I’m picking sides.

  “I’m saying…I’m saying I would need more of a guarantee of my own safety,” he said carefully.

  Knight nodded
. “We can guarantee that,” he said.

  “Sending in an army doesn’t—”

  “No,” Knight cut Adam off, waving a hand. “That isn’t what I mean. We can guarantee your safety by ensuring that no one would know you were the one responsible for Thompson’s death.”

  That threw Adam for a loop. “Really? How?”

  Knight got up from his desk and walked over to a safe embedded in the wall. Adam watched as he spun the dial and opened the door.

  He leaned back in his seat, expecting to see some sort of weapon, but to his surprise, Knight reached into the safe and pulled out a small canteen. Adam heard it slosh as Knight carried it back to his desk, sat down, and placed it before Adam.

  “Is it water?” Adam asked.

  “It’s poisoned,” Knight said.

  Adam stared. “Where did you get it?”

  “My guard has always kept poison pills on hand,” Knight said. “Even before this emergency started, they were something that was always available. Of course, the hope was that they would never be needed, an unnecessary precaution. But presidents are at risk of being captured by their enemies, and it was important that we have a way to make sure high-level information couldn’t be extracted from us.”

  Adam had never thought about such a thing before, but of course it made sense. “You and President Riddick kept suicide pills in case you were captured and tortured for information.”

  Knight nodded. “And when we came to this bunker, I felt it worthwhile to add another layer of security to the procedure. My guards still keep the pills, of course, but in case they can’t get to me, I have a spiked canteen in my safe. Any indication that enemies are starting to take the bunker and I would head straight there.

  Creepy. Adam reached out for the canteen, rested his fingers on it, but did not pull it closer. “What am I supposed to do with it?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “This is your weapon,” Knight said.

  “Thompson won’t drink from a strange canteen.”

  “He won’t need to. All he has to do is turn his back for a few seconds. A few drops in any drink and he’ll be done for.”

  For the first time, Adam felt a scrap of hope. Maybe this plan did stand a chance at working. The thinnest, barest shred of a chance, but a chance nonetheless.

  “You’re hesitating,” Knight said. “What is it? Don’t you believe that this will work?”

  “It’s not that,” Adam said. “I think…it’s as good a plan as anyone could have come up with under the circumstances. I don’t know if it will work or not, but I don’t know what else we could possibly do that would work any better.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Knight asked.

  Do I dare tell him the truth? He knew what Ella would say. She would tell him not to. She would tell him that he couldn’t trust anyone and that trying to put his trust in people had only ever gotten him into trouble.

  And she would be right.

  Except, of course, for the one notable and vital exception.

  He had trusted her.

  Trusting people didn’t always lead you wrong. And in this instance, Adam knew, he was just going to have to go with his gut instinct.

  His instinct was telling him that President Knight could be trusted.

  “I have friends on the base,” he said. “People who were captured alongside me. General Thompson agreed that if I carried this message to you, he would release us all and let us go our own way. I’m afraid that if it comes to a fight, even if you’re doing your best to protect me, my friends will come to harm.”

  Knight nodded. “I see,” he said quietly.

  Adam held his breath.

  “I won’t lie to you, Mr. Parkhead,” Knight said. “I can’t promise you that your friends will be safe. But I can promise you that my men are highly trained, and that none of them relish violence. I can promise you that they won’t attack anyone who hasn’t attacked them first or positioned themselves as a threat in some regard. I don’t think you can say the same of General Thompson’s men.”

  “No,” Adam conceded. “I can’t.”

  “Your friends’ safety would be at risk if we were to execute this plan,” Knight said. “But I daresay they’re at risk already, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would.”

  “Sometimes you have to take a risk in order to win your safety. Isn’t that what you did when you agreed to carry a message to me for Thompson?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Adam said.

  “And if you do this for me,” Knight said, “if you successfully carry out this assassination, I can guarantee a safe haven for you and your friends. My men will escort you back here, and you’ll be able to live comfortably in our bunker for as long as you’d like.”

  “Will we be prisoners here?” Adam asked. It would be a fine kettle of fish if I got us out of Thompson’s camp only to get us locked down in the president’s bunker.

  “No,” Knight said. “You’ll be free to leave at any time. It would be my personal recommendation that you stay, of course. But if you’d prefer to take your chances on your own, my men and I would respect that decision.”

  “As long as I kill a man for you first,” Adam said.

  “I wish I didn’t need this from you,” Knight said. “I know it’s a terrible thing to have to ask. But I do need it.”

  “So I take the poison back to California with me,” Adam said, taking hold of the strap of the canteen and pulling it closer to him. To his surprise, it didn’t feel upsetting or repulsive to have this poisoned water in his hands. It felt like a shield, like he finally had a means of keeping himself and the people he cared for safe. “I slip the poison to General Thompson. And then, when the rest of the camp discovers he’s dead, you’ll come in.”

  “And we’ll disarm the bomb,” Knight said.

  “Do you know how to do that?”

  “I don’t, but there are people on my staff who will hopefully be able to figure it out. Will you be able to show us where it is?”

  “Yes.” Adam hesitated. “One of the people I’m with had a hand in designing the explosives. She’s a nuclear scientist, and she was taken prisoner, along with her young son. They’ve been threatening the boy as a way of forcing her to cooperate. If this works, I want to make sure she’s given immunity. I don’t want her facing any kind of punishment for what she was forced to do.”

  Knight frowned. “That’s not going to look good to my people.”

  “I don’t care,” Adam said. “If you want my cooperation, you can do this for me. I want my friends to go free.”

  “Are you sure you were an actor?” Knight asked. “You think like a politician.”

  “Thanks,” Adam said grimly. “Do we have a deal or not?”

  “We have a deal.” Knight extended his hand, and Adam reached out and shook it.

  “I can leave right away,” Adam said.

  “No,” said Knight.

  “No?”

  “You wouldn’t know it from down here, but it’s the middle of the night,” Knight said. “I’m not sending you out again until the sun is up. You’ll stay with us tonight, and in the morning you can be on your way. Will you be able to find your friends again?”

  “They’re not my friends,” Adam said. “But if your people can point me back toward the town where I was picked up, then yes, I’ll be able to find my way back.”

  “Very well.” Knight got to his feet. “Now, let me show you to a place where you can sleep.”

  Chapter 19

  Adam expected to be collected by Knight’s guards, but to his surprise, Knight himself led him out of the room they’d been sitting in and down a dimly lit hallway.

  “You have lighting,” Adam noted.

  Knight nodded. “This bunker was secured against the EMP’s effects, so we still have a few remnants of modern technology. Not very much, of course. Nobody was planning for things to go the way they did. We have working telephones, but there�
�s no one to call. We have working computers, but there’s no internet to connect to. And, since the bunker isn’t equipped with any renewable energy sources, everything is only as good as the generator that powers it.”

  “What will you do when that runs out?” Adam asked.

  “It’s a fair question,” Knight said. “We’re always thinking about the future, always trying to plan for the world we’re hoping to be living in a few years from now. The good news is that we already know how to build the technology we used to have. We have a rudimentary understanding of what’s possible and how to create it. The bad news is that we are a small community down here, and we need more scientific minds if that kind of sustainability is to become a reality.”

  The words hung in the air between them, and Adam remembered that he had told Knight that one of the people he wanted to rescue from General Thompson was a nuclear scientist. Knight had promised that he, Ella, and Julie would be able to go free if they wanted to do so. But could he really hold to that promise?

  Adam had seen enough of this man to understand how motivated he was by the future. If he thought something was necessary for the betterment of mankind, he might not mind breaking a promise to an individual.

  In a way, Knight was just like Thompson.

  But he was different, too, wasn’t he? Thompson didn’t care who got hurt anymore. Thompson was heartless, and so were the people who served underneath him. Knight wasn’t like that. Knight seemed to care more than anything about what was best for humanity.

  Unless Adam had misjudged him.

  Adam had to admit that he had misjudged a lot of people over the last several months.

  They passed a large room padded with gym mats. Adam glanced in. “What’s this?” he asked, thinking that it looked like a good place to lock up an insane person.

  “That’s the playroom,” Knight said. “It used to be a fitness center—we had it put in so that anyone who was forced down here in an emergency would be able to get some exercise—but since we’re able to go above ground and run around whenever we want to, we don’t really use it for that. It’s been repurposed as a play area for the children.