The Eye of Moloch (46 page)
“Rutherford, sir.”
“See me when I get back, Mr. Rutherford. This is good work you did, and I’m going to have a lot more for you in the future.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As he strapped himself in and went about starting the engines, Landers rechecked the route and thought it all through. There was bad weather coming in but with any luck they’d beat it, get the job done, and be home in time for a late dinner and a modest celebration.
He would have been more comfortable going in with greater force, but Talion was spread quite thin across the country. Most of the men and resources had been deployed to make a public show of strength for the company, making appearances at the many smaller incidents he’d spawned with the help of George Pierce. After today’s heroic crescendo there would be more to work with, and great new opportunities on the horizon.
And George Pierce was another matter. He’d been useful enough but he would no doubt be cooking up a mutiny before very long, and that would have to be dealt with swiftly. Putting him down would be a great pleasure, though this and many other rewarding deeds would have to wait for a less eventful afternoon.
That old saw was true: there really is no rest for the wicked.
Warren Landers confirmed his final clearance with the tower. Shortly thereafter the last of the men boarded and stowed another long case of
ammo for the M134 minigun mounted behind him. An assortment of gas canisters and satchel charges were already loaded.
Without further ado he lifted off into a high, rock-steady hover, and then he pitched the craft sharply forward and set them off with all available speed on his course toward western Pennsylvania.
H
ollis awoke with a start, sweaty and tense and even more weary than he’d been before he closed his eyes. His swollen arm had been killing him and he’d put his head in his hands for only a moment, he’d thought, but the clock on the wall said he’d been out for almost two hours.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
Young Tyler was at the table across the office, still monitoring the radio.
“No change,” he said. “They’re working in the back; the manager guy sent the rest of the employees home, like you said, and left us with the keys. I’m waiting to hear any news that comes in, but there’s nothing so far. I would have woken you up if there was any reason to. It seemed like you needed to sleep. Man, are you seriously okay? Because you look like a crap sandwich.”
“I’m fine,” Hollis said, though his voice didn’t sound it. “Who’s watching those water heaters?”
Tyler pointed to a nearby TV that showed six inset close-ups of the temperature readouts on the tanks. “Wireless home security system,” he
said, “from aisle seventeen. Lana and I set it up over an hour ago. This place has got everything.”
Hollis stood and waited for his balance to settle. “That was good thinking,” he said. “You stay, I’m going to go and check on the others.”
When he rounded the last corner into the vehicle bay he could hardly believe his eyes.
The extra hours of unexpected waiting had been put to very good use by Cathy Merrick and her helpers. For the first time he saw the finished product stripped of all the masking tape and drop cloths.
The old road-beaten company truck she’d been given as a blank canvas had been steam-cleaned, repainted, and ingeniously augmented with repurposed items from the plentiful warehouse shelves. The truck was transformed from stem to stern into the glossy spitting image of a Pennsylvania hazmat emergency vehicle complete with realistic siren horns, diamond-plate running boards, rooftop strobes, and more.
If you got close enough, some of the lettering appeared to be of the press-on type one might use to put an address on a mailbox, but it was so well integrated that the overall look was near perfect. Most every other label, official seal, and logo was hand-painted, including the government-coded license plates. The only visual clue that these things weren’t real was that the artist was still touching up her work here and there with a makeshift palette and a tiny brush.
“This is outstanding,” Hollis said.
“Thanks.” Cathy Merrick swept her bangs from her eyes with her wrist and looked up at him. “I think it’ll pass, as long as no one gets too close. Let me show you where it’s weak, though.”
The overall shape and size wasn’t correct and there was nothing that could be done about that; she’d accomplished what she could with deceptive shading and other airbrushed optical trickery. Still, it looked good enough to fool almost anyone unless they broke out a tape measure with a set of factory dimensions.
The other standout problems were the doors and windows in the
back section. The HomeWorx truck had only a wide roll-up door in the rear. The vehicle it was meant to impersonate featured double doors that opened from the middle with tinted windows in several places. This glaring difference would be noticed by anyone who’d ever seen a medical show on TV, much less by a trained security detail.
The missing doors and windows had been painted on, so realistically that it seemed like you could just reach out and open them right up. Some chrome hardware, smoky Plexiglas, and black-rubber molding was spot-glued in place to add some 3-D realism to the art. But despite the almost uncanny illusion this was indeed the weakest link. It looked great at a glance and it all might withstand a quick viewing from several feet away, but it would not hold up to any extended inspection.
“I think it’s going to be okay,” Hollis said. “You’ve really outdone yourself here.” He felt a little dizzy, and pulled over a folding chair to sit down.
“Are you all right? You look like you’ve just run a mile.”
“I’ll be okay.”
Cathy put down her brush and paints and felt his forehead with the back of her fingers. “You’re burning up.”
“I know, I’ll be okay. Why don’t you show me what else we’ve got here. We might have to drop everything and take off any minute now.”
Cathy took him around and went through the rest of the work. The laminated, pin-on ID tags Lana Somin had made at the computer station were picture-perfect, gilded replicas of the examples she’d downloaded from the Internet. They’d even crafted some actual badges from molded hot-melt glue, embedded safety pins, and gold metallic paint.
There were two cobbled-together uniforms, one for the driver and another for a front-seat passenger. These had been dyed and decorated from materials on hand, jailbreak style, using generic work shirts and pants.
Since it was possible that the driver’s compartment of the truck might have to endure a brief viewing, it had been dressed up as well.
Tool carriers disguised as medical bags and a number of 3M full-face respirators from the paint department were conspicuously placed. A hanging microphone on a coiled cord was clipped to the sun visor with its loose plug stuffed into the ashtray. A handheld radio scanner was mounted near the glove box and would be turned up loud and tuned to police frequencies to provide realistic background noise in the interior.
“One of those uniforms is for you and the other’s for me,” Cathy Merrick said. “In fact, we should get dressed now. I’ll be driving, you’ll sit up front, and everyone else will be riding in the back.”
It was all good work, much better than he could have hoped for.
As she’d been showing him these things, Hollis was also thinking about what this woman had been through in recent days. The courage she and the others were displaying was something to admire considering all that had happened and the unknowns ahead. People often don’t know what they can do until they’re called upon to do it; he’d seen this sort of grit in wartime, of course, from civilians and soldiers alike.
None of it was mentioned, but the burden of what they’d lost was there as well, in each of them. The hurt was held in check only by the urgent needs of the moment and the acceptance that a proper memorial for the fallen would have to wait for another time.
Just as Hollis had finished changing his clothes, Tyler ran up and handed him a notepad.
“Molly and the others,” the boy said. “I don’t know how they did it but they’re coming by plane, and they’re on their way in.” He pointed to a set of numbers he’d copied down. “Those are the coordinates of an old private airport outside of Boyers, about twenty miles up the road. I’ve already put the location into the GPS; that’s where they’re going to try to land.”
“When?”
“Soon. Half an hour, maybe.”
“Okay, then,” Hollis said. “Let’s get ready to move.”
It had begun to rain and the high raftered ceiling was clattering softly
and resonating with the occasional peal of thunder. But as he stopped and listened, he found another noise was growing there as well.
“Do you hear that?”
Tyler listened, and then he nodded, frowning.
“You all stay back here,” Hollis said. The only firearms they’d kept were the handguns from the grab-and-go bags they’d taken as they fled the ranch. He took one of these pistols, tucked it into his belt in back, and then pointed to the bunker of cement bags the employees had helped them stack up earlier. “All three of you stay under cover until I come back. I’m going to go out and see what’s what.”
Though the sun was still up, the overcast sky appeared very dark through the tall glass windows at the front of the warehouse. By the time he’d reached the center section of the place the steady, airborne noise he’d heard had become unmistakable.
A searchlight from above began to sweep the length and breadth of the parking lot outside, and soon a black helicopter descended into view. Its insignias were those of the ruthless mercenaries who had laid waste to the trail behind him all these months. Its cargo bay was open and it was hovering close enough that he could clearly see the barrel of a mounted machine gun swing around and lock its aim in his direction.
T
he last few seconds before the shooting started crept by slowly enough to let a flood of separate thoughts tear through Hollis’s mind.
The defensive preparations he and Tyler had made earlier were meant only as a last-resort deterrence against ground forces. He hadn’t factored in a threat like this, perhaps because once they were trapped from the air the rest of the plan would collapse and they’d have no chance to get away.
He could give himself up now, as he’d told the others he would do if the law rolled up and there was no escape. But these weren’t lawmen, and the thought of turning his people over to a pack of murderous thugs was nearly as bad as the idea of leading them into a fatal last stand.
And Molly was still on her way into the area. If he could delay things here by even a little, it could make time for the others to send off a message so she at least might escape capture.
A quick decision was needed, and so he made it.
He would walk out to give himself up, confess that he’d forced the three in back into unwilling service, and then hope that his friends
would use the short distraction of his surrender to get on the radio and try to warn the others away.
Hollis raised his empty hands above his head and stepped out into the open.
The men outside didn’t hesitate. As he took the first step forward the gun flashed and the windows shattered and he dove back for cover as a furious volley of bullets tore a ragged furrow up the aisle where he’d stood only a moment before.
The helicopter eased forward and dropped lower as its pilot tried to give the gunner a better angle on his target. Hollis held himself flat to the floor as the torrent of gunfire cut another swath across the interior, shredding everything in its path to flying shards and splinters. And then the roar of the gun outside stopped abruptly; seconds passed, and the echoes faded.
If this lull in the destruction was due to a jam then the odds had shifted, even if only slightly. It was an opportunity to either retreat or advance and only one of those offered slim hope. Hollis stood and threw caution to the wind and drew his pistol, charging forward, firing toward the cockpit and the open cargo bay.
The sheer surprise of seeing this rash counterattack against an armored aircraft must have far outweighed its actual threat to its occupants. As the chopper banked and veered away, one of the men in back was either hit by a lucky shot or simply lost his footing and fell, arms flailing, sixty feet down into the pavement.
