“Wait,” Noah said. He sat and pulled up the cuff of his slacks to show his house-arrest bracelet. “Three of us are wearing these damned things. We have to get them off or they’ll find us before we get a mile away.”
Hollis left his vigil at the window, pulled a Bowie knife from its sheath on his belt, and cut the strap off the device with a quick outward stroke of the blade. A small bright blue dye pack spat against Noah’s leg as the bracelet fell free. As it lay on the floor the pattern of its status lights changed to a flashing red warning signal.
The other two hurried over when summoned and Hollis removed Lana’s anklet in the same fashion, but Ira stepped back when his own turn came.
“Leave mine on,” he said. “I’ll take the ones you cut off, and whichever way you run I’ll go the other direction. That might buy you a little more time.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Lana said. These were practically the first words she’d spoken on the trip, and they were said with a depth of emotion that Noah hadn’t heard from her before. “You don’t. We can—”
“Listen to me,” Ira said. “You all know it’s better this way.” He looked to Lana. “I’ll be fine whatever happens, kid, and you’ll have a better chance. Now come on, we’re wasting time.”
Hollis handed over the other two devices, shook Ira’s hand with a grim nod and a quiet word of thanks, and then said, “Let’s go.”
“We shouldn’t move her,” Ellen said, still down at Virginia’s side. “She’s hit her head, and none of these wounds seem life-threatening but that could change fast if she gets bounced around too much. I need to keep her quiet and get her to a proper emergency room right away, so I’ll stay here with her—”
“No,” Noah said. “I’m not leaving either of you here. Whoever’s coming now isn’t coming to help. We’ve got to get going.” He bent and gathered up the unconscious woman in his arms, lifting her as carefully as he could. “It’s what she’d want us to do, believe me.”
Once outside, Hollis gave Lana Somin his compass and then set them on a path pushing east through the dark of the dense forest. He would follow, far enough behind to guard their flank. Noah looked back only once in the beginning and he saw Ira Gershon disappearing into the distance, moving as quickly as his age and fitness would allow, heading off the other way into the night.
• • •
It felt as though they’d traveled for miles before Noah felt himself giving out and he finally had to stop and call a rest.
Under the clouds and the canopy of the tall redwoods there were no stars or other points of reference—not that he would have known how to read them if they’d been there. Since a light rain had begun, all other sounds were drowned out by a steady pattering among the leaves. They could have been walking in circles for all he could tell, but according to Lana the compass assured her otherwise.
Virginia Ward was no better and still drifting in and out of consciousness. Ellen was tending to her, though, and at least she didn’t seem any worse. As they were about to get going again Hollis caught up and let them know that their destination wasn’t much farther on. Despite his own injuries, the big man then picked up Virginia himself, so effortlessly that it seemed he probably could have carried her all the way to the hospital if need be.
It wasn’t long until they broke through into a natural clearing, just a strip of grassland nestled between a wooded hillside and a slow-running stream. There was a campfire with three people seated around it, two of whom Noah didn’t recognize—a teenage boy and a woman who might be his mother, judging by their resemblance. But the third person he knew without any doubt.
There was that lovely face, the one that had stayed faithfully in his thoughts through every trial since they’d last been together. He hadn’t yet allowed himself to imagine he’d ever see her again, but there she was, alive and well.
“Molly,” he whispered.
The others proceeded on past him. Hollis brought Virginia Ward near to the warmth in the center of the camp and laid her down on a dry blanket. Ellen enlisted the others to help as she resumed her caregiving. Noah had begun to feel the burden of the miles they’d traveled but his fatigue seemed to vanish as he walked those last few yards toward the young woman waiting for him by the fire.
When he spoke her name again Molly heard his voice and looked toward him—toward him, but not at him. As he sat near she reached out with her hands and lightly touched his face, and she smiled, going over his features in that way, as though she were recalling him by feel alone. She pulled him close and kissed him and then wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight for a long while.
“What’s happened to you?” Noah asked.
“Didn’t they tell you?”
“No,” he said. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”
• • •
It wasn’t long before Ellen Davenport put her foot down and announced that her patients needed much better medicine than could be provided in these conditions, and they needed it soon. She had a friend from medical school who ran a private outpatient clinic a little over an hour’s drive away, in San Francisco. They’d find a phone and she’d make the calls during the trip and arrange for a surgeon and the necessary personnel and facilities to be waiting when they pulled in. There was no room for argument this time; that’s the way it was going to be.
Hollis had already lined up ground transport to meet them all at a rendezvous point just ahead.
The group would be splitting up now. There was a good deal of prep work to be done in western Pennsylvania and Hollis wanted to be certain that the coast was clear out there before Molly came to join them. To that end, Noah and Molly would stay the night at the San Francisco clinic as Ellen cared for Virginia there, while the advance team continued on. Then, when the signal was received that the mission was a go, they’d all be reunited out east.
The group left the campsite with no trace that anyone had ever been there. It was only a short downhill hike to the edge of a nearly deserted highway. Their timing was good; a moving glow soon appeared in the fog and a van arrived shortly thereafter. It pulled to a stop, flashed a signal with its headlights, and they were off.
Chapter 48
In this place where the world’s super-elite liked to playact at rugged living, there was one large cabin that was always reserved and kept spotless and ready for a single, infrequent visitor. No one but his servants, his invited guests, and his closest associates had ever set foot inside since it had been built for Aaron Doyle in the early 1930s.
There he sat before the roaring fire, considering the status of the game that had been playing out for most of his long life.
Some moves had taken years to formulate—the ebbs and flows of political power, the debasement of a key currency, the patient process of swindling on a global scale—but in response to every move he made there always came an answer. These countermoves were so clear one could almost see William Merchant’s hand behind them.
But the game had taken on a frightening new aspect following the dying words of Arthur Gardner. What he’d said had scarcely left Doyle’s mind since, and now those words returned to him again.
If Merchant is dead, then who in heaven’s name has been up there fighting against us for these past thirty years?
Who, indeed.
The die was cast, in any case. Whatever or whomever it was that he was playing against, whether flesh or spirit, the game must proceed. Deep in these thoughts, Doyle flinched then at the sound of a voice just beside him.
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news,” Warren Landers said.
“Tell me.”
Landers bent and spoke into his ear, and as he did so he made a motion toward the door. Two guards entered with a small and bloodied man dragged between them.
They forced the prisoner to his knees in the center of the room. One of them held him where he knelt, slapped him hard across the face, and wrenched his arm behind him with a smart twist to bring him alert for the question
ing.
“What’s your name?” Landers asked.
The kneeling man was looking only at Aaron Doyle. His voice was winded and broken when he spoke, but the words were quite clear. “I thought you people knew everything,” he said. “Don’t you already know who I am?”
He was struck again, and Landers repeated his demand.
“Tell us your name.”
“I’m Ira Gershon.”
The other guard had left the room but now he returned and began to methodically spread wide, thin plastic sheeting in overlapping layers behind and around the prisoner, a precaution to keep any of the fine furnishings from being soiled.
“And your friends, Mr. Gershon, where are they?”
“I don’t know.” This denial was met with another blow and a twist of the arm hard enough to dislocate the joint. The kneeling man drew in his breath sharply, but he didn’t cry out. His eyes were still fixed on Aaron Doyle.
“We have other avenues to find them,” Landers said. “There’s nowhere they can hide—”
“But they’re not hiding anymore.”
Doyle turned to the prisoner for the first time, and leaned closer. “What is it that she’s going to do?” he asked.
“That, I can tell you,” Gershon said. “Someday soon, she’s going to win.”
Landers sighed and gave a nod to the man behind, who’d now finished his preparations. He came around, drew his pistol, and stood ready.
Ira Gershon straightened himself up as best he could. “Would you let me pray a last time?” he asked.
“Go right ahead,” Landers said. “Why not waste your last few seconds on earth with a plea to the empty sky?”
As the kneeling man set about his foolish ritual, Landers bent again to the ear of Aaron Doyle, lowered his voice, and spoke with assurance. “I have good people working on the forensics from their last hideout. They tell me to expect definitive information within a few hours, a day at the most. With some luck we’ll know everything we need to. Whatever they do, you’ve planned for it, sir. We’ll turn it against them and make the best of it.”
Doyle nodded slowly, but he didn’t seem so sure.
Landers stood, checked his watch, and turned back to the man on his knees. “All right, then. Have you finished?”
The pious silence dragged on for a few seconds longer and at last Ira Gershon unclasped his hands and looked up. “Yes, I’m finished.”
Landers motioned to the executioner, who checked his silenced weapon for readiness, pressed the muzzle to the prisoner’s forehead, pulled back the hammer, and waited for the final order.
“Hell of a lot of good all that praying did you,” Landers said.
The man on his knees smiled at this, having made his peace with what was coming, and then he quietly spoke his final words.
“What makes you think I was praying for me?”
PART THREE
Chapter 49
Most American citizens wouldn’t believe how difficult it had become to travel freely—untracked, unrecorded, and unidentified—within the borders of their own home country. What was once the norm had become all but impossible, and that had made Hollis’s transcontinental trip to Pennsylvania not only dangerous but also very expensive.
He’d caught barely an hour of troubled sleep and felt achy and lightheaded as he awoke. He was hurting, and it wasn’t getting better. First he’d taken a glancing blast from a sawed-off shotgun at the start of that vicious gunfight at the Merrick ranch, then he’d been hit twice again as they made their escape from California.
These latest wounds had bled a lot but the bullets had passed right through without hitting anything vital. Noah’s doctor friend had stitched him up and dug some day-old birdshot from his shoulder and the side of his neck. She’d strongly advised him to go to the hospital—sound advice that he’d obviously ignored—and then she’d given him a course of strong antibiotics, which he’d promptly left behind as he and the advance team left in a rush the night before.
He was still determined to grit his way through these injuries, but he could tell he was weakening. The fever was real now, he could almost feel an aggressive infection spreading under his skin, and his left arm was growing more swollen and inflamed as time went on.
Hollis was semi-reclined in the passenger seat of an eighteen-wheeler that had picked them up for the final leg of their overnight journey. Lana Somin and Cathy and Tyler Merrick were in the sleeper compartment behind him. When he turned to check on them, mother and son were resting peacefully, but the young lady was not. Her gaze was far away and serene, but there were traces of tears on her cheeks that she hadn’t bothered to wipe away.
They’d just passed through a commercial area of the town and soon their driver slowed and made his wide turn onto a rough service road.
The orange and black signage along this private thoroughfare carried the distinctive logo of HomeWorx, as did the tractor-trailer they were riding in. This company was a family-owned, mid-Atlantic chain of big-box home improvement stores, and up ahead stood one of its original locations, now converted to a regional distribution center. In recent years they’d had to close a number of locations and move their base of operations farther east, rendering this particular warehouse nearly obsolete for its original purpose.
“Take us around back, if you would,” Hollis said.
He alerted young Lana and she woke the others. As the truck pulled to a stop at a loading bay in the rear of the warehouse, Hollis said his thanks to the driver and went inside to meet their contact. When he was assured that all was well he waved the all-clear to the other three.
The head of this chain had been a longtime supporter of Molly’s mother and he’d been happy to help when he’d gotten the call. Ask anything, he’d said, and Hollis had asked for a lot.
So they could blend in as much as possible, the four of them were issued light orange coveralls like those worn by the staff. After they’d changed, Hollis called them together in a cavernous vehicle bay, along with a small group of carefully screened employees who’d been put at his disposal for the day.
“Let me make something clear,” Hollis said. “If this goes bad today, if we get cornered by the cops—I mean actual law enforcement—we won’t put up a fight. We don’t fire a shot or raise a hand to the police. If it comes down to that I’ll go out and give myself up, alone, and all of you will swear on a Bible that I forced you here at gunpoint. They’ll believe that right off, things being as they are. We’ll send word to Molly beforehand so they won’t get her, too, and then I’ll take the fall for all this. Everybody understand?”
No one looked happy at the prospect, but they all agreed.
“Now,” Hollis continued, “the clock’s running, and I’d say we’ve got a good morning’s work ahead of us. I’ve radioed the others that we’re all clear so far but we don’t know exactly when they’re coming, so we’ve got to be ready ASAP. First, we need security. You”—he pointed to the heftiest of the local men and read his nameplate—“Hector, you pick your own partner, and then you two boys keep watch for anyone who doesn’t belong here. Don’t confront anybody.” He slid a pair of in-store handheld radios across the table. “Just call me and tell me what you see. Keep that walkie-talkie on channel 14. Okay?”
“Okay,” Hector said, and he nodded to the fellow next to him. “Him and me, we’ll keep watch.”
“Good. Check in with me every quarter hour.” The two men left for their stations, and Hollis turned back to the other employees. “This place has got just about everything we could need but we’d waste a lot of time trying to find it all ourselves. Whatever these two ladies here ask you for, if you could jump on it and fetch their supplies, that’ll be a great help. They may need some extra hands, too, so please, just be at their service. Now, Ms. Somin, Noah Gardner told me you’re good with computers.”
“I am,” she said.
“We’ll need some IDs. I’ll show you examples when you’re ready to start on them. They just ne
ed to be good enough to flash; no one’s going to have time to look at them too close. And then there’s this.” He handed across a thick spiral-bound book that had been left for him in a locker there. “That’s the system layout and the network administrator’s manual from the place we’re going after today. Take good care of that; it took a lot of doing to get it copied and slipped out of there for us. Now if you could get a head start on looking into the guts of what we’ll be up against—”
She’d had a chance to read only the cover before she interrupted him. “I can tell you right now, there’s no fricking way. A facility like this? It’s not like in the movies. There’s no way I could break into this system in one day, not in a month, nobody could, not from outside.”
“Well, that’s okay,” Hollis said, “because we’re going to be inside. If we all do our jobs right we’re going to drive up to the front gate, big as life, and they’re going to open up the doors and let us in.”
With that bit of news delivered, Hollis saw the first shade of a smile forming.
“Cool,” Lana said.
“Now, I want you all to assume that this is going to go off without a hitch. You don’t have time for worries along with everything else. But Tyler and I will be making preparations in case things should go awry.”
“I thought you said if we got caught we were going to give up,” Tyler said.
“I said if we got caught by law enforcement. But if I see the kind of scum roll up here like those that came for you and your folks on the ranch, son, there’s going to be some hell to pay.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” Cathy Merrick asked.