Paradise Falls (57 page)

Katie put her head on Jennifer’s shoulder, and Jennifer looked at her. The only family she had left in the world.

It was all a distraction. Running circles in her head, she refused to look back at the plain fact that the last time she saw Jacob he was lying unconscious on the asphalt, bleeding, surrounded by armed enemies. A small, quiet, rational part of her stated the obvious: He was dead, and she needed to find a way out of this on her own.

She didn’t believe that.

It was like a warmth in her chest, an invisible but absolute conviction. He was alive, and he was coming for her. She could feel it like she could smell ozone in the air after a summer storm.

Another glance through the windshield. The driver pulled off the highway, drove down a back road. Jennifer shifted so she could glance over through the fringe of her hacked off hair and watch, hopefully without being too obvious. Despair crept back up her spine, inching along on cold little legs. She had no idea where she was. She didn’t recognize this place.

There was a fence up ahead, eight feet tall and topped with razor wire. At first she thought prison, but the tower was wrong and there weren’t enough buildings. When the van turned and two Fangs in sky blue uniforms pulled open a wide gate, she saw humped round buildings with big doors and it hit her. Airfield. It was an airfield. They drove in and she blinked a few times at the grass and weeds that clutched the earth through cracks in the tarmac.

She did know this place, after all.

It was a huge scandal a few years back- James walked away from that one clean, of course, but she remembered the news mentioning his involvement even though she was still in college at the time. Several state officials were indicted on a massive scam around rural airports like this one. She didn’t know which one for sure, but some of the transportation funds allocated to the state went to a couple of airports like this- really just runways with control towers, not true airports at all.

They were mostly used by congressmen and their staff, and before it was closed down, after the scandal, James used to fly in and out of here from Paradise Falls to Washington and back. He made a show of catching the train these days, riding with the common man and all that.

The place was decidedly disused, but it wasn’t empty. The hangar doors were open, and inside was a private jet, and an expensive one at that, sleek and black. Standing inside another was a helicopter, not military, the kind used for tours.

Two other jets stood in open hangers. Three all together.

 
An electric chirp cut through the hush in the van and the rifleman answered his phone, spoke in clipped Arabic and hung up. The van rolled to a stop and the rifleman watched her, specifically, as the drive came around the back and swung the doors open. The light was blinding, and she blinked at it as the driver barked, “Out.”

Stumbling, Jennifer stepped out first. Katie was right behind her, and then Elliot. He flinched when the drive came at him with a knife, then held stone still as they cut the tape holding his wrists apart.

“Elliot,” a lilting voice said, “I must apologize for the harsh treatment. My men can be overzealous and, to be perfectly frank, you are an arrogant little worm and it is better to put the fear in you than try to explain anything.”

Jennifer stared. The man from the part, with the eyepatch. He had his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He was better dressed than Elliot but their attire was mostly the same. The might as well have been going to the country club.

“Miss Katzenberg,” he said. “You don’t know me, but I know you. I’ve been waiting for this for some time.”

Al Naab. The leader of the Fangs.
The
Fang. The man who tortured Jacob, cut him up and gave him those scars.

“You,” he said, to Elliot. “Go and change your clothes. Your stink offends me.”

He walked over to Jennifer and seized the corner of the tape over her mouth, and yanked away.

Jennifer yelped in pain. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but after that she went silent.

There was no point to looking away, so she met his eyes. Eye. He was wearing a freaking eyepatch. Jennifer studied his face. The whole left side was slack, and his mouth seemed frozen on the one side, even if it didn’t slur his speech. She realized she was assessing him. Slight limp, favored his right side heavily. He’d been badly injured and was covering it up. Probably in the airstrike that Jacob described. He did not remove Katie’s gag.

“I should kill you now,” he said, as if he were considering what to have for dinner. “I think I will not, because what I have in mind is far more amusing.”

Jennifer gave him a blank look. He frowned slightly, as in disappointment.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

Jennifer was still bound, hands behind her back. The little helicopter was rolling out of the hangar. It looked like something they might use for tours, take people up and fly them over a city skyline or the Grand Canyon or something like that. The tail number was 27KXBQ12, if that meant something. She silently repeated the sequence of numbers to herself, committing them to memory as the rotors began to turn, the big loud engines whining to life. The blades were well overhead, but she ducked anyway as one of Al Naab’s men pushed her forward and, rather thoughtfully, shoved a pair of ear mufflers on her head. They cut the noise to to a tolerable level as she was pushed down into a narrow bucket seat and strapped in. Katie was pushed in beside her.

Where was Elliot?

She looked around. He was in clean clothes, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and he was flanked by two Fangs. They shoved muffs over his ears and he moved up and into the chopper, sat down opposite Jennifer, and his legs started shaking.

Jennifer had never flown before. She’d never had the occasion. Katie hadn’t either. Elliot had, she realized. When Al Naab sat next to the pilot and the ground crew closed the doors, Jennifer felt strangely giddy, lightheaded. When the crew was clear the rotors spun up and the whole machine wobbled, and Jennifer pushed into the seat, looking through the plexiglass panel at the bottom of the big sliding door, watching the ground tilt and pitch as it swung away under her.

6.

Jacob crushed down a wave of frustration as he limped out of the truck stop. He couldn’t even remember how he’d picked up a limp, but his right knee was killing him. The accident, maybe. No, not an accident, the ramming. He ran his hand down his leg and while it hurt, it didn’t come away wet with blood. That was good enough for him. If it became too severe he’d wrap some tape around the joint for support.

“You’re hurt,” the girl observed.

She touched his shoulder and he shrugged her away.

“It doesn’t matter. I have to find Jennifer.”

She was hard to read, this one. She had big eyes but they were clouded somehow, her whole expression too steady. She made him uneasy, especially as he opened the Martyr’s hatch.

“Where did you get this?”

“I bought it,” he grunted. “Get in.”

“I want one,” she said, and clambered into the back seat. “You know the way to the compound?”

“Yes,” he said, lowering himself into to cockpit.

His hip screamed at him now. Bruises. He hadn’t really checked himself over after the wreck. His hands were shaking and kept shaking until he started the engine and squeezed the control yoke in his hands. His knuckles went white before the trembling stopped. Cold dread burned in his chest, like he’d swallowed a lump of dry ice and it was peeling the skin from his throat.

She wasn’t here. She was supposed to be here. Fix it.
Save her.

“Are you alright?” said the girl. “You’re just sitting there.”

“Yeah, fine,” his hands trembled as he put the machine in gear.

He was lying. He was pretty far from fine. He could still feel the cold slippery rope of hair in his hands.
They cut off her hair
. What else did they do to her while he was lying on the ground, useless?

You fool
, he screamed at himself,
you useless idiot.

So he drove.

“Talk,” he said. “I want to know who you really and who you really work for.”

“Not without very inventive torture,” she said, and from her tone she meant it.

Jacob ground his teeth.

“Give me something. A reason not to dump you on the side of the road.”

“We have a common enemy. My superiors have tasked me with stopping the Fangs and ending this plot.”

“You should have come to me earlier. Helped us piece this together.”

“I work alone. Your interference is useful to me now. When it’s not I will no longer work with you.”

“I don’t trust you,” he said.

“Yet I’m sitting behind you.”

“Desperation does weird things to a man.”

He saw her lean over, to look at him over the back of his seat.

“Is this about the woman?”

“Her name is Jennifer.”

“There are larger things at stake here. If we-“

Jacob slammed on the brakes and rounded on her, rising in the seat.

“Not for me,” he roared.

She shrank back, pressed into her seat, and raised her hand.

“Help me and I will see you to her,” she said. “We must stop this operation before it begins. The Fang means to start a war.”

Jacob sank back into the seat, his head pounding. Shame at his lost of control rippled through him, a cold void sinking down into the pit of his stomach. He pressed his mouth closed and drove, ignoring the constant dull ache in his hip and knee and the throbbing burn in his shoulder, the dull agony on his back and chest. He was bleeding under the ballistic vest, but it wasn’t bad.

He didn’t have time to bleed, anyway.

The compound was marked on the Martyr’s navigation system. Jacob crossed as much open ground as he could, threading along hedges and dirt roads between corn fields, taking the shortest path. The bodies at the truck stop were fresh, the blood still wet. He wasn’t far behind. If they’d taken Jennifer there he’d find her and take her home and stop all this, and he’d
take her home
.

“What do you know about the fangs?” said Jacob.

“What do you know?”

“Islamic terrorist splinter group,” said Jacob. “Controlled territory in Iraq before the coalition drove them out. Held me captive.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re mistaken. They are not Islamists or even Muslim.”

“What? How do you know?”

“I know much and more,” she said. “The Fangs worship a serpent god. Hence the name.”

“When I was in captivity I heard-“

“You heard what needed to be heard to maintain the illusion. Many of the lower-order members are unaware of the cult’s true nature.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I have my reasons,” she said. “There.”

The Martyr crested a low rise and the compound came into view. Jacob brought her to a slow stop and shut down the engine, and peered ahead. The place was deserted, he knew in an instant. Everything had been moved. Every single shipping container stood open, and the machinery was all abandoned, frozen. He opened the hatch and stood up.

“Looks empty,” he said. “Your intel was wrong.”

“No, they are here,” she said, “I am sure of it. We must go. There’s a flaw in their surveillance system, towards the southeast corner…”

“I know. I cut the fence a few days ago. I’ve been here. I’ll give this ten minutes, and then I’m gone.”

“Where? You have no leads. You need my help.”

Jacob sighed. He grabbed his rifle and closed the hatch after she climbed out, and began jogging towards the fence line, ignoring the pain in his leg. It pulled at him hard, making his jogging ugly, uneven, and he stumbled a bit before he reached the fence.

The whole place was eerily quiet. Except for the metallic creak of shifting metal doors and the buzzing of bugs, there was no sound, not even the wind. Jacob found the place where he’d opened the fence before, peeled it back and pushed inside. The girl followed, until Jacob stopped.

“Ladies first,” he said.

She shot him an annoyed looked and jogged a few paces ahead. Jacob followed her down the long row between the containers, peering inside. Each one stood open, empty, and smelled like oil. It made for a lot of corners to check, a lot of angles to cover. He moved too slowly, cursing himself, urging his damned leg to stop throbbing. The deeper he went into the compound, the more exposed he felt. He could be surrounded and not realize it.

The girl just walked, one hand resting on the pistol at her hip, looking from side to side.

Something about this was off.

“How did you find me?” he whispered.

“What?”

“How did you know where I would look for Jennifer?”

“We tracked some of the vans from the compound to that location.”

“Why didn’t you strike here first? Shut them down?”

“By the time we found it, it was too late. If you’d volunteered your intelligence…”

“I found it. So could you. Why haven’t I ever run into you before? If you’ve been investigating Katzenberg we should have bumped into each other before the lawyer’s office.”

“Perhaps we have and I simply did not reveal myself,” she shrugged.

“When? What would it hurt to tell me now?”

“I’m under strict orders. My superiors don’t trust you. I’m taking a risk by even offering to help you.”

Jacob stopped. “This is a dead end. I’m leaving. If you want to come, follow me. If not, catch a ride.”

“Wait,” she said, more sharply than he expected. “At least come take a look at the foreman’s office. Even if they’re not here now there will be some record of where they may have gone.”

Jacob set his jaw. She was probably right. If he went back to the Martyr now he was at square one, only down over an hour of search time with no leads. He could try tracking her phone…

Sighing with resignation, he trudged along behind her, heading for the trailer that held the office, next to the empty motor pool. Jacob slowed as he stepped out into the open, scanning the area, looking for any movement, a flash, anything that might signal an ambush, but there was nothing but buzzing bugs and that damned creaking. A wasp flew by his face, angrily buzzing a challenge at him. The girl was already headed up the metal staircase to the office, motioning him forward.