Journey Into the Flame (30 page)

He grabbed the lamp from the bedside table, tossed aside the lampshade, and plugged it into an outlet near the dumbwaiter. Then he poked his head into the shaft. “Doesn’t look like the dumbwaiter goes any higher than this floor—down is the only option.”

“How do you know it still works?” Valerie asked.

“I don’t,” he answered with a slight smile. He grabbed the rope and tugged on it. “But at least we know the pulley up there is still hooked up.” He backed himself out of the opening, so that she could see for herself.

She popped her head in. “What do you think is at the bottom?” she asked, her voice echoing down the shaft.

“My guess is the kitchen,” he said. “Let’s try it.” He grabbed the rope and slowly pulled the delivery cart toward them. Even after all the years of disuse, the pulley wheel still worked and squeaked only slightly as the wheel rotated. When the cart arrived, Logan and Valerie dislodged it from the rail and brought it quietly into the room.

“Now what?”

“Now we secure the rope from the cart to something immovable.” Logan unhooked it from the cart and secured it to one of the iron bars on the windows. “Then we climb down the rope. Can you manage that? How’s your leg?”

Valerie didn’t respond. She just grabbed the rope and gave it a couple of good tugs to make sure it could handle her weight. Then she climbed
into the shaft, pressing her feet against the cart rails along the wall to steady herself as she descended. It seemed her leg was good enough.

Logan took hold of the rope to provide additional security as he tracked her progress. Soon she reached the bottom, and he heard her fiddling with the access door in the darkness below. Then he heard the squeaking of hinges as she pushed the door open.

“You’re right,” she called softly from below. “It’s the kitchen. There’s no one here.”

Logan clasped the rope with both hands and swung out into the shaft. Like Valerie, he used the rails to steady himself as he climbed down. He squeezed through the access door and emerged in the corner of a large kitchen where brooms, mops, and other cleaning equipment were kept. The room was dark except for the moonlight that shone through the windows.

Valerie was crouched down by one of the windows, cautiously peering out. “Get down!” she whispered urgently.

Logan moved over and squatted beside her.

“There’s one guard with a flashlight patrolling the back gardens. While you were coming down, I found a back door, but it’s double-locked. Opening these old windows might make noise, but the window over the sink”—she pointed to her left—“is open. If we time it right, we could slip out without the guard noticing.”

Staying low, she hurried over to the kitchen sink window. When she turned to beckon Logan over, she saw him standing by the kitchen’s interior swinging door, peeking out.

She ran over to him. “What are you doing? There are guards all over the front entrance!” She looked over his shoulder into the main hallway, where a small table lamp cast a dim light, but no guards were in sight.

As Logan looked down the hall, he saw the doorway to Andrea’s parlor. “I need to get something before we leave,” he whispered, suddenly turning around. “I want my backpack.”

34

If all of your excuses were removed, how would your life change?

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA, 12:42 A.M. LOCAL TIME,

3 DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM DAY

Valerie wanted to yell, “What are you doing?” She was not at all happy with Logan’s hasty move, but she kept silent and quickly followed him into the hallway, which was quiet except for the muted sound of a HoloTV in one of the front rooms. She was on Logan’s heels as he entered the parlor.

“Found it,” he said, as he grabbed his backpack and also gathered the dismantled pieces of their PCDs and stashed them in the pack.

Valerie spotted her gun and badge and scooped them up, too. She heard footsteps and men talking in the hallway. “We have to get out of here!”

She tucked her gun into the waistband of her pants, and she and Logan ran to the open window that faced the back of the property, pushed out the screen, and climbed out.

Running silently through the gardens by the light of the moon and the stars, they made their way into the vineyard behind the house and continued down one of the long rows of grapevines. Logan could see
that Valerie’s leg was bothering her, wincing as she was with each step. They took cover behind a small stand of trees and bushes along the perimeter of the vineyard.

As Logan looked back at the house to see if their escape had been detected, he handed Valerie the parts of her PCD. “Dammit, they smashed the activation chip,” she said. Then she took her WCF badge out of her pocket.

“What are you doing?” Logan asked, watching as she carefully pulled off the laminate coating and then used her fingernail to pierce the paper and extract a small, thin piece of glass. “Tricks of the trade,” she said. “Every WCF badge has one.” She inserted the glass chip into the PCD, and in moments, it sprang back to life. The same instant, a call came in from Charlie.

“Are you all right? What the hell happened?” he said. “We’ve been searching everywhere for you two.”

Before Valerie could answer, the exterior lights of the plantation house came on. Floodlights illuminated the house and the grounds. Men brandishing guns were running out, shouting at one another. Logan and Valerie’s escape had been discovered.

“Can’t explain right now!” Valerie answered frantically. She heard the sound of barking dogs. “We need backup here ASAP!”

“Already en route, Chief,” Charlie said. “We have your position, two teams airborne. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“Come in
loud
,” Valerie said with emphasis, as Charlie’s projected image gave her a thumbs-up. She shut down her PCD and looked through the bushes. “Let’s hope they get here before those dogs do.”

Logan saw dogs prowling, searching for their scent.

“If they get too close, we need to split up,” Valerie said. She readied her weapon. “You run that way toward the main road, and I’ll go the other way and provide you with some cover.”

One of the dogs let out a loud bark and started to lead his master into the vineyard. The other dogs followed, weaving back and forth down the aisle of grapevines.

“On the count of three, I want you to run as fast as you can down to the road,” Valerie instructed. “One.” Logan readied himself. “Two.” She pointed her gun toward their pursuers.

Logan took a deep breath, preparing for his dash, but a roaring sound in the sky made him look up. “Do you hear that? Sounds like helicopters.”

“Thank you, Charlie!” Valerie sighed. She relaxed her weapon hand and watched as the guard leading the search party looked up at the night sky, too.

“That was fast,” Logan said, trying to spot the helicopters.

“They’re still probably a few miles away,” Valerie said. “But they have their sound-magnification devices on so they sound closer.”

He looked at her. “So that’s what you meant by coming in loud.”

She nodded. “Looks like some of the guards are not going to wait around.” She watched as the three men handling the barking dogs yanked the animals’ leashes and quickly led them back to the house, while a few of Andrea’s mercenaries jumped into black SUVs and sped away from the plantation. Several tense moments passed. Then, suddenly, the helicopters came into view. Just as Charlie had promised.

Gunshots rang out as the remaining mercenaries turned their weapons skyward and the arriving helicopters returned fire. As the mercenaries scattered in the face of superior WCF firepower and the gunfight wound down, Valerie and Logan emerged from behind the trees and cautiously made their way back to the plantation house. A slew of WCF ground vehicles pulled into the driveway. WCF agents started fanning out to secure the plantation.

“I can’t wait to start looking around that house,” Valerie said, hurrying forward. “There should be enough evidence in there for us to track all these criminals down.”

Just then, her PCD rang again. It was Charlie, wearing a headset with an attached microphone. “We’re over the plantation house now. Looks like everything is secured. Nice to see you two alive down there. Head to the house. I’ll just—”

Valerie and Logan were thrust to the ground by a massive blast. Fiery debris rained down on them. They could feel the heat as they covered their heads and stayed close to the ground. When they looked up, they saw the plantation house had exploded and was now immersed in flames. One of the helicopters turned on its side, out of control. Another blast from the ground engulfed the falling copter. All of a sudden, the blades splintered off and smashed into parked vehicles and a nearby water tank. The helicopter disappeared into the burning building, releasing a plume of dark smoke and ash.

“Charlie! Charlie!” Valerie screamed into her PCD. But there was no answer. She made a dash toward the house, but Logan reached out and stopped her. Fiery shards were still falling to the ground. “Charlie,” Valerie said softly as she fell to her knees and dropped her PCD. Logan knelt down beside her and put his arms around her shoulders.

•  •  •

Ten minutes later, Valerie and Logan were watching from the back of an ambulance as the local fire department dealt with the burning plantation house.

“You need to have a doctor look at this,” a paramedic said, as he redressed Valerie’s leg.

Valerie wasn’t going anywhere to get anything checked out. She had just lost the only partner she had ever had. She looked at Logan, saying nothing.

“You all right?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But that doesn’t matter.” Without another word, she got up out of the ambulance and quickened her pace.

“Where are you going?” he said as he followed her across the driveway. She was heading toward the black van she had seen Andrea’s mercenaries get into after speaking with her. The door was still open.

She slipped into the driver’s seat and searched for the key, which she found stuffed behind the sun visor. Logan joined her on the passenger side. “I think this is the vehicle they were going to use to drive us to
G-LAB,” she said as she started the van. “If it is, either the guards knew exactly where to take us because they had been there before, or Andrea left a map or directions for them.”

Logan looked straight ahead at the dashboard and the other devices that had lit up. “Or she programmed the address of the lab into the GPS.”

Valerie nodded. She pressed a few buttons on the GPS and brought up a list of destinations the vehicle had traveled to. “This van has been all over in the last ten days. There must be fifty addresses in here. Richmond, Philadelphia, Rockville.” Logan listened as she scanned the list. “Back to Richmond, to Norfolk, then to Triangle Park—”

“Wait,” Logan said. He grabbed Valerie’s hand, stopping it from scrolling down the list any further. “Triangle Park. That’s in North Carolina, isn’t it?”

Valerie selected the address and brought it up on the van’s GPS system. “Yes, it’s near Durham, North Carolina. Why?”

“Randolph Fenquist,” Logan said, thinking back. “When he confronted me in the street, he told me Andrea had been spending time in North Carolina. Maybe that’s where they were going to take us.”

He paused. Had Randolph purposely given him that information? he wondered. Why would he have done that?

Valerie, meanwhile, used the GPS controls to zoom in closer on the address. It was an abandoned Army building.

“Why would they go there?” Logan asked.

“I have no idea. But we’ll soon find out, because that’s our next stop,” Valerie said. Then she turned to Logan. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more sympathetic when you found out Andrea and Simon might have killed your parents,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know how you felt. Charlie was the only partner I ever had. I understand why you were so focused on tracking them down. And I’m not going to stop until we get them now, either.”

35

How would you teach yourself?

Could you be a prophet in your own land?

Could you be your own greatest teacher?

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

NEAR RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NORTH CAROLINA,

6:00 A.M. LOCAL TIME, 2 DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM DAY

WCF snipers had taken their places and radioed in their positions. Their advanced weaponry systems could track multiple targets and instantly communicate that information to other snipers in their network. With a single order, they could make a deadly and coordinated strike. An assault team was also ready, waiting for the go-ahead from Valerie.

“We’re not sure what we are going to find in there,” she announced on the secure communication link. “Be ready for anything. Alpha team, once you’re in, start looking for any type of self-destruct device. I refuse to have a repeat of the plantation house.”

It was just after 6:00
A.M.,
and a formidable group of WCF personnel had gathered at the location retrieved from the van’s navigation system. The two-story brick Army research office building was located near Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. It was listed in WCF records as having been abandoned since the time of the Great Disruption. Some of the windows on the second floor were broken and abandoned, and stripped cars were scattered throughout the parking lot.
A downed electrical pole lay over a shattered blue sign from an empty tavern next to the building.

Logan stood next to Valerie, where she and the rest of the operation support team had created a small command center behind the tavern building. A clump of trees stood between them and the former research facility.

“Alpha team, you have the lead,” Valerie ordered. With that, a member of the assault team blew open the lock at the back entrance and tossed a gas grenade inside the building, quickly filling the first floor with smoke. Twelve heavily armed men wearing gas masks and helmet-mounted cameras ran into the building. Logan and Valerie watched as a HoloPad projected what each team member was experiencing. While it was sometimes difficult to see through the haze of smoke, they could make out collapsed old-fashioned furniture and office machines coated in dust and cobwebs.