The Rule of Three (31 page)

“I must be keeping really warm because I can feel the sweat running down my sides,” she said.

“I bet you say that to all the boys.”

“Not all of them. Just out of curiosity, what would happen if we crashed?”

“We’re not going to crash. The worst thing that would happen is I’d have to put us down. One of the advantages of an ultralight is that I don’t need much space to land.”

I looked down at the road below. It was cluttered with abandoned vehicles. Not much open landing space. Between the vehicles I could make out people already up and about, walking along with pails and buckets. Life went on, and gathering water was the most basic activity.

“This is so different from being in a big plane,” Lori said. “I feel more like a bird than a passenger. How high can this fly?”

“My ceiling is around eight thousand feet.”

“How high are we now?”

“Just over fifteen hundred feet. Do you want to go higher?”

“This is fine, unless you need to go up. Could you do a loop-de-loop?”

“Depends on if I wanted us to die or not.”

“Wouldn’t the harnesses hold us in?”

“Yep, they’d keep us inside the ultralight all the way to the crash landing.”

“That’s too bad.” She sounded genuinely disappointed.

“But I think I could do a barrel roll.”

“A barrel roll?”

I motioned with my right hand, turning it over. “But it’s pretty dangerous—we might prefer to live.”

Lori laughed. “How long can we be up for?”

“It depends on speed and fuel consumption. At this speed, about four hours, but if I added an auxiliary tank we could be up for twice as long and travel twice as far.”

“How far?”

“With the extra tank we could go six hundred miles, as long as I stayed well under our top speed of seventy-five miles an hour.”

“Are we traveling that fast right now?”

“Just over half that,” I said.

“It doesn’t seem that fast.”

“That’s the thing about height. Lots of things aren’t the way they seem from up close.”

We were quiet for a stretch, just enjoying the view and each other’s company. At one point, we passed over a deserted strip mall where the stores had all clearly been looted and burned.

Lori sighed. “You can see so much from up here.”

“I can see our target up ahead,” I said.

“All I can see is houses and more houses.”

“We’re aiming for those houses just ahead and to the south. The cement highway fence is their boundary, just like it is for part of our neighborhood. Do you see some tipped-over cars blocking a street leading off the main road?”

“I see it. That’s the Olde Burnham Hills neighborhood. I’ve been there before all this happened. I’ve got a couple friends from over there.”

Thank goodness Chad wasn’t one of them. He lived way south of our neighborhood in one of the bigger houses by the lake.

Olde Burnham was a relatively new subdivision, a gated community with a wall around the whole development and a front gate with a gatehouse. It was significantly smaller than our neighborhood, just a few hundred people.

As we closed in I could also see guards—sentries at the gate. I banked sharply to the right, and Lori grabbed onto her seat with both hands.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I thought you’d changed your mind and were doing a barrel roll!”

“That I’d warn you about.”

We crossed above the cement wall and soared over the tops of houses and streets. Down below, people were looking up, pointing, waving, running along to try to keep us in view longer.

“Hang on again,” I said.

I banked hard to the left. The turn cost us speed and height. I leveled off at less than fifty feet and came in low and flat toward the guards at the gate.

“Okay, there’s your target!” I said.

Lori reached down with one hand, undid the Velcro holding the parcel in place under her seat, and pulled it free. The package contained a letter from Herb asking for a meeting the next day and a small gift—thirty chlorine tablets—enough to purify a lot of water.

Lori lowered the parcel over the side and after a moment or two let it go. I banked again, sharply to the left—the better to avoid passing over the guards and to see the parcel with its homemade parachute drifting down.

I held our turn while Lori kept an eye on the parcel. As long as it didn’t land in a tree or on a roof, our mission would be accomplished.

“Direct hit!” she shouted, and then narrated as it landed on the pavement in the middle of an intersection and was mobbed by a group of people.

I pulled back on the stick, banked right, and goosed the gas all at once in an attempt to gain speed and height simultaneously while pulling us away from the area.

“I’m still not sure why we had to do it this way,” Lori said.

“Unexpected face-to-face meetings can be open to misunderstanding, and misunderstanding can lead to bad things.” I couldn’t have sounded more Herb-like if I’d tried.

“How will we know if they agree to the meeting?”

“If they agree, they’ll show up tomorrow at ten in the middle of the big bridge over the river.”

“Seems like a strange place for a meeting.”

“Herb explained it’s the best place for a meeting. Nobody can sneak up on anybody. Herb asked for just two of their people to walk across and meet two of our people in the middle.”

“Herb is a different sort of guy,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong—he’s always supernice to us. It’s just that sometimes I get the feeling that, well, this sounds crazy, but that he could be dangerous.”

I laughed. “Believe me, he could be very, very dangerous. But he’s always thinking of what’s best for the neighborhood.”

A gust of wind shook the wings and bounced us around a bit. She laughed, too, which was like music to my ears. I wished I could do a barrel roll just for her, but really, that was too risky. I’d had some dates that crashed and burned, but not the way that could happen in a plane.

She reached out and placed a hand on my hand. It felt good.
Really
good. Maybe better than I deserved to feel with everything that was going on around us.

34

I stopped at our side of the bridge and turned the car off.

“Do you think they’ll show?” I asked.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Herb replied.

Behind us, the rest of our convoy came to a stop. Howie was leading a dozen guards. They were all armed, as were we.

“Sorry I couldn’t be up in the air to provide an eye in the sky.” It was too windy to risk a flight today.

“You can only do what you can do. I’m glad to have you here.”

“I thought you might want Brett here instead of me.”

“He is here.”

I looked around. “Where?”

“He’s on the edge of the cliff, on the opposite side of the bridge. He has a rifle with a scope.”

“I thought we were just going to talk.”

“That’s my plan, but it might not be theirs. You know how I feel about a backup plan.”

Herb always had a contingency plan. I wondered if his contingency plan had a backup plan as well.

There were a few random travelers straggling their way across the bridge. Closest was a family—a man, a woman, and four children, including a baby. They eyed us warily and then passed, trying to keep as much space between us and them as possible. I didn’t see a gun, but there was no question the parents would be carrying a weapon of one sort or another.

Two trucks pulled up and stopped at the opposite end of the bridge. From its bright orange color I thought I recognized the bigger of the two from my overhead pass yesterday.

“Is that them?”

“Looks like it.”

“So do we go now?” I asked. We were doing the old-man-and-boy routine again. My mother knew all about the meeting except for the fact I was going out onto the bridge with Herb. If I didn’t ask, she couldn’t say no—better to ask for forgiveness afterward than permission that might not come.

“No weapons.” Herb pulled out his revolver and put it on the dashboard of the car.

“At all?” I questioned, wondering if he had a backup gun on him somewhere.

“No need. Like I said, we have friends in high places … up on the cliffside.”

I removed my pistol. Somehow I felt undressed without the weight of it in the holster on my belt.

We climbed out of the car. Herb turned to Howie. “Nobody comes onto the bridge until we get back.”

“You can count on it.”

As we started onto the bridge Howie and the guards walked over and sealed it off. There were a few people still in the middle coming toward us. They’d be allowed to leave, but nobody else was going to come on from our side. I’d noticed they were blocking the other side as well.

I looked across to the far side and saw two figures coming toward us from the trucks.

“Not too fast,” Herb said. “We don’t want to look anxious or threatening. We’re just here to talk.”

“I’m just here to listen.”

Slowly we approached them, passing random people on the bridge. Those who had now noticed both ends blocked off looked scared. Herb offered them reassurance.

“It’s just a meeting,” he said to one family. “No need to be afraid.”

The two men from Olde Burnham looked like they were my dad’s age. Both were bigger than Herb and me. Both were empty-handed, as far as I could tell. I tried to read them. They looked like two guys reluctantly shopping at the mall with their wives—kind of annoyed, not really wanting to be there.

“Remember,” Herb said, “big smile, look as friendly as possible.”

Another part of the deception. Herb had told me that assassins often had smiles on their faces to disarm their targets. Is that what we were—assassins? Or were we the targets? I flashed a phony smile. I just hoped they couldn’t read the fear in my eyes.

“Any problems, any gunfire, and you hit the deck and wait for Howie to come and get you in a vehicle,” Herb said.

“Okay.”

“Now, stay right here, I’m going the rest of the way on my own.”

I took another half step before his sideways glance stopped me completely. As much as I didn’t want to be here and didn’t want to go any farther, I wanted to be by his side.

He kept walking, eyes forward. The two other men hesitated in response, exchanged a few words, and then did as we had done, one waiting and the second going forward.

“Good afternoon!” Herb yelled out. “I assume you fellas are from Olde Burnham. Glad you could make it.”

The other man said something to Herb that was too quiet for me to hear. The two met in the middle and shook hands, probably exchanging introductions. I stared at them but also tried to look past to the man standing farther behind. He was shuffling his feet nervously.

Herb turned and gestured for me at the same instant the other man was called forward. A surge of adrenaline jumped through me. I worked to contain the energy and walked calmly, timing my steps so that I’d arrive at the same instant that the other guy did.

“Well, it’s your meeting, Herb,” the first man said. “What can we do for you?”

“I guess I just wanted to be neighborly,” Herb said. “We’re from the settlement west of here.”

“Eden Mills?” he asked.

“You know about us.”

“We have been sending out scouts to see what’s going on out there. Are you the leader?” he asked.

“I’m a representative,” Herb said, “but I’m able to make decisions. And you?”

“I’m one of the leaders for Olde Burnham. We have a lot of people to look after in our neck of the woods.”

“And we can defend ourselves,” the second man added. His statement was threatening, but his voice was hesitant, catching over the last words. He was scared.

“I would imagine you’ve had the same problems we’ve had,” Herb said. “Have you been fending off any attacks?”

“Until we came together there were some
incidents
,” the first man said. “Since then we upped our defenses. Now whenever we see some threatening groups of people pass by and give us the eye, we make sure they move on.”

“We’ve had the same. So far they’re only targeting the weak and defenseless.”

“And we’re neither,” the second said. Again, not that convincingly.

“We’re aware of your size and relative strength,” Herb said. “After all, we did do a couple of flyovers.”

“That ultralight gives you a real advantage,” the first guy said.

“It does. My young friend is the pilot.”

“And there’s been another plane flying over as well—is that yours, too?” he asked.

“We’ve heard reports of a plane,” Herb said. “We think it’s some sort of Cessna.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said, “but just once.”

“We’ve seen it a few times, but never as low as you flew. That little thing of yours certainly was a surprise,” the first man said. By his tone, he clearly meant it wasn’t a nice surprise.

“Dropping a package seemed like the best way to extend the invitation without risking a misunderstanding,” Herb said.

“A couple of the guys wanted to take a shot at the ultralight, but I told them not to,” he said.

My eyes went wide at that remark, as I thought about how I’d naively reassured Lori that we were perfectly safe up there.

“I think my young friend here and his girlfriend are particularly glad you didn’t,” Herb explained.

“To be honest, it’s hard to get control over people,” the second man said. “I think the reason nobody did shoot was because they couldn’t get a bead on you and we’re trying not to waste the limited—”

“Shut up,” the first man snapped.

“Look,” Herb said, “we all have limited quantities of the necessities, whether it’s ammunition, medicine, food, or chlorine to disinfect water supplies.”

“Oh, we thought you might have more chlorine,” the guy in charge said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Those tablets are pretty valuable. We don’t have an endless amount, but we do have enough that we can share some more with you. Could you use another hundred tablets?”

“That would be great, but what do you want from us in return?”

“Like I said, we don’t have unlimited quantities, but chlorine is something we could talk about sharing more of. Think of it as one neighbor trying to help another.”