Authors: Sigmund Brouwer
Dead Man's Switch (15 page)
“I can't make you have faith in God,” Mack said. “And even if you said it was there, that's still something between you and God. But I want you to know why I believe. It began the moment I held you. Your tiny head was in my palm, and the rest of your body stretched along my forearm with your toes touching the inside of my elbow. I busted out bawling. I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried. I'm holding you and bawling my eyes out and so full of this insane loveâ¦I decided that love was bigger than my pitiful little life and that it gave meaning to everything I did.
“To me, it's about starting with a search for how and why life has meaning. There I was, holding you, and I finally understood the phrase I'd heard again and again so often it had become hollow up to that moment: God loves you like a father loves a son. Like a parent loves a child. And I figured if you couldn't ever realize how much I loved you, then that's how it must be for God and how He loves me. I'm not saying you need to be the kind who shakes his fist at anyone who doesn't agree. I'm just saying I hope you'll give a long hard look at whether
there's more to this life than what you see in the physical world. Here's my biggest and sometimes my only prayer. That whatever happens in this lifetime, we'll be a family beyond.”
“You're scaring me,” King said.
“I know. We don't talk like this very much. Okay, never. But you got to admit, a place and time like this leads you toward it.”
“It's not that,” King said. “It's what I'm reading between the lines. You're worried about the dryer lint again. Except this time, it's not a chance in a billion. We're armed with dart rifles and EIDs, and we've got about five miles of wilderness and deranged killers between us and the cliffs. And we're having this talk because you don't like our chances of making it.”
Mack hesitated and then gave a half smile. “Yep. What I'd give to be back in that moment when I thought things were in my control and that cleaning the dryer vents would be enough to protect you. But I learned that control is just an illusion. All we can do is our best.”
“Probably a good time for a hug,” King said.
“Yeah, but that would be awkward. So let's check our weapons instead. That favor I called inâ¦the sensors won't be down very long.”
“Snorkeling gear?” King asked Mack as he looked inside the backpack. “Wet suit?”
Mack had set out a battery-powered lantern, and the light seemed soft in their bunker as King looked through the contents. It was a full-size camping backpack made of nylon fabricâblack, of courseâwith a lightweight aluminum frame.
Mack had taken the backpack from where it leaned against the wall, handed it to King, and invited King to open it and peer inside. A second backpackâfrom all appearances, identicalâwas still along the wall. This one belonged to Mack.
“I've got a matching suit in my backpack,” Mack said. “The only way to survive the water is to keep from getting too cold. The wet suits will also keep us buoyant. Flippers and mask and snorkel will make it easier for us to swim.”
“And stay underwater with just a snorkel showing if a chopper has searchlights? The black wet suit doesn't hurt either.”
Mack grunted in agreement. Then he motioned at the backpack. “Front pocket. Put the GPS watch on your left wrist.”
King did as instructed. It had a rubber wristband, clear plastic face, and rubber coating around the face. Black, naturally.
Mack reached over to the lantern and shut it off. The bunker went black.
“Learn to read it in the dark,” Mack said. “Feel for the three buttons on the side. In home position, top button brings up the compass.
Middle button shows a couple of GPS waypoints that I've set. Bottom button gives a little arrow. Click the middle button.”
King's eyes had begun to adjust to the dark. He saw the numbers in glowing green, showing the time. When he clicked the middle button, the numbers transitioned to A, B, C.
“Top button brings up A,” Mack said. “Middle button brings up B. Bottom button gives you C. We want to get to A first, so press the top button.”
When King did, the green glowing numbers changed again. He understood the top number. It was the GPS waypoint. Below it was a small arrow. And under that another number: 1575.
“Five minutes,” Mack said. “That's when we leave this bunker. The chopper will have cleared the area, and we won't have to worry about heat sensors from above. That gives us 20 minutes to go about one and a half kilometers to reach position A while the thermal sensors are down.”
“That's what I'm reading?” King asked. “Fifteen hundred seventy-five meters to the destination?”
“Meters,” Mack confirmed. “Kilometer and a half is about a mile. I've set the GPS to metric. See that arrow? It points to the target. No way to get lost. Just follow the arrow and check once in a while to see how the gap is closing.”
“Sounds easy.”
“It is easy. I have my own. In case we get separated, we meet at position B. That's by the cliff, in a gap between sensors.”
“Are ropes there so we can climb down?”
“No, I've got flares, duct tape, and a bunch of other stuff in my backpack. We're going to fly. It's like MacGyver.”
“Fly? MacGyver?”
King was rewarded by a sigh from Mack.
“MacGyver. A guy in a television series who engineered escape plans.”
“And position C?” King asked.
“Mainland. Hiding spot on the shore. When we hit the water, we use the watches to make it across to where I buried a garbage bag with clothes and money. I made sure it's where the current will take us as we
swim across. In the water, all we need to do is check the arrows on the GPS occasionally to make sure we're in position as we swim.”
King thought of the dark, cold water and shuddered. Not likely that sharks would be cruising. But he'd have to trust what he'd heard about killer whales. That there were no recorded attacks on humans. Of course, if people didn't survive a killer whale attack, they wouldn't be around to report it.
King had a question, but Mack didn't give him a chance to ask.
“Side pocket,” Mack said. “Night vision goggles. I don't want to turn the lantern back on and ruin your night vision. The longer we're in here like this, the easier on our eyes when we go back outside. Put the goggles on and find the switch at the left side.”
King found the goggles. Hit the switch.
“Cool,” King said. The total dark had gone to a greenish glow as it picked up the tiny bit of light shed by the GPS.
“Drop them around your neck for now, okay? If you're not used to them, it makes it tougher to walk, and we should have enough moonlight to get to position A. My goggles are thermal sensors. When our targets are close enough, that's when we'll put on the goggles, and between thermal and visual, we should have the advantage.”
“Targets?”
“No way are we going to make it to the edge of the cliff without Murdoch sending hunters after us. These men are experienced hunters and killers. The sane thing to do would be to run as fast and as hard as possible. Last thing he's going to expect is for us to do the hunting first. We take them out before they take us out, and by the time he gets a second set after us, it's too late. We win the race to the cliff.”
“Position A,” King said. Humans hunting humans. The thought of it sent his already racing heart into overdrive, and he felt a new surge of adrenalin. The most dangerous predator in the world was also the most dangerous prey. “We're setting up an ambush?”
“Yeah,” Mack answered. “With about a half hour to get there. You ready?”
“Not much choice,” King said. “Not anymore.”
“If we get into position before the hunters are released, we'll have a chance.”
That had been Mack's promise. Of course, it depended on whether the favor Mack had called in had been delivered and the thermal sensors stayed down the entire hour, giving them a small window of time to make it unnoticed into the forbidden zone. And it depended on how long the western-facing rock wall behind King held the heat it had absorbed during the day.
King stood near the base of a spruce tree beside that wall, well covered by low-hanging branches. His dart rifle rested on a branch, and the barrel stuck out of the dense spruce needles and faced the path. He could reach the trigger almost instantly.
The branches provided a visual screen for an ambush, especially at night, even if the hunters had night vision goggles. Still, King felt open and exposed. He knew his body heat was higher than the heat of the tree. He felt as if he and Mack were easy targets for anyone who was using thermal sensors or receiving instructions from someone at the prison's main computer terminal.
To get around that, King was wrapped in a space blanket. This common camping item, based on NASA technology, was a lightweight plastic sheet with a Mylar coating that made it look like tinfoil. But it was lighter and cheaper, and it was a great reflector of heat.
King was wearing it inside out, to minimize any leakage of body heat that would reach a thermal sensor. He also wore a hood crudely made from the same material. With the night vision goggles on, most of his face was covered.
His best protection, however, was the 12-foot-tall outcropping of rock wall behind him, rock that had absorbed heat during the day and was cooling gradually now.
When they'd reached it, Mack had reassured King by giving King a look at the rock face through his thermal goggles. The rock wallâvirtually invisible in the darknessâglowed a dull orange in the thermal goggles. As further reassurance, Mack had stepped up to the rock and wrapped himself in a space blanket, and King had checked it out through the thermals. Mack's heat imprint was lost against the heat imprint of the rock.
Perfect. Well, almost perfect.
The space blanket was crinkly, so it rustled with the slightest movement. Which meant King had to remain perfectly motionless as the space blanket reflected his body heat back at him and drops of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades and collected in the small of his back.
King was terrified, and this alone was enough motivation not to reveal himself with movement. But he was also determined to be Mack's equal. If Mack could hold position in total silence and total patience under another spruce only five yards farther down the path, then King would do it too.
The loudest thing, it seemed to King, was his own heartbeat. Because if Mack was correct, Murdoch had sent out some of the most disturbed men in the entire national prison system. With the sole purpose of hunting Mack and King.
“If we get into position before the hunters are released, we'll have a chance.”
It also depended on whether the released prisoners followed the pattern Mack had observed earlier. He'd told King that they usually fanned out in pairs. One pair always took the path that led past this rock outcrop because it was the easiest route into the heart of the forbidden zone.
It was a gamble, but it was really their only option.
With Mack's dart rifle set in position too, all they could do was wait.
And hope.
Predator was now prey.
They came in as delicately as mice afraid of attracting a cat.
Two of them, just as Mack had predicted. He'd always observed them hunting in pairs.
What made the delicacy of their approach more terrifying was how big each of the men were. King had been straining to see the slightest movement through his night goggles, and at first, he thought the slight detachment of a shape from a tree down the path was his imagination.
Then he realized it was worse than anything he could imagine in a nightmare.
The shape turned into the vague outline of arms and legs attached to a huge body. Then a second body.
King stopped breathing.
He had specific instructions from Mack.
“Don't shoot. Let them pass.”
King's role was backup. Mack would take them out.
King waited until it felt as if he had to gasp. Mack had thermal goggles.
Surely Mack had seen them, right?
But nothing was happening.
Except the vague terrifying outlines of two humans moved closer and closer. Any second now, they'd reach Mack andâ
The crinkle of movement came first. The Mylar betrayed that Mack had made his move.
The slightest shift of time. Then,
thfft, thfft.
Mack had fired the dart rifle.
So close to that sound that King almost didn't hear came the
slap, slap
of darts striking targets.
Then snorts of laughter from the monsters on the path.
“Dude,” one of them said in a weirdly echoing voice. “That all you got?”
In the moonlight, King could see their outlines clearly through his night vision goggles, green ghostly images that looked like Sasquatch. They split apart, forming a triangle of the two of them and the position from where Mack had fired, transforming themselves from mice scared of a cat, to cats themselves, twitching tails and about to pounce.
