UnDivided (30 page)

“My associate may be smaller than his weapon, but he's happy about it. Trigger-happy, that is, so I'd avoid sudden movements if I was you.”

Even the armchair special-ops potatoes of the broadcast facility, who fancy themselves the heroes of every TV show they watch, are subdued into stunned silence. They put their hands up, mimicking the way they've seen it done by the nonspeaking extras.

“Kindly step into the storeroom—plenty of space for all. Grab a legal pad, if you like, and write a memoir of your harrowing experience at our ruthless hands.”

Someone tries to surreptitiously dial a phone in his pocket. That's only to be expected.

“By all means, use your phones to call for help. Of course, we've blocked outgoing phone signals, but we wouldn't want to deny you your false sense of hope.”

The intruders lock the radio station staff in the storeroom, and the staff makes the best of their time in the tight quarters. The station manager stews. A secretary cries. Others grab snacks from the shelf and nervously eat, pondering their own mortality.

With the staff locked safely away, the intruders take over the broadcast for a total of five minutes, linking into a radio grid, increasing its effective broadcast range by a thousand miles. Not bad for five AWOLs.

On their way out, they silently unlock the store room, something the station staff discovers about a minute later. They emerge like turtles from a shell to find the station empty of intruders, but still broadcasting. Not dead air, because no radio station should ever suffer the indignation of radio silence. Instead it broadcasts the same signature song Hayden's guerrilla broadcast team always leaves behind to mark their patronage. Lush tones croon slick on the airwaves.

“I've got you . . . under my skin. . . .”

Days come and go on the Arápache reservation without much fanfare. It's not that life is simple, because where in a modern world can life be called simple anymore? But it is an unencumbered life. By choosing isolation, the Arápache have successfully protected themselves, remaining safe and sane in a world gone foul. As they are the wealthiest of tribal nations, there are those who call the Arápache Rez the ultimate gated community. They are not blind to the things that go on beyond the gate, but are certainly removed by several degrees.

Naturally any attempt to bring the world a few degrees closer would be met with powerful resistance. Yet Lev truly believed he could make a difference. After all he's been through, he still cannot come to terms with disappointment. He wonders if that keeps him human, or if it's a flaw in his character. Perhaps a dangerous one.

With the door locked, Lev stands before a bathroom mirror, in the Tashi'ne home, making eye contact with his reflection, trying to connect with some other version of himself. Who he was, or who he is, or who he might still be.

Kele pounds on the door, impatient as twelve-year-olds tend to be. “Lev, what are you still doing in there? I need in!”

“Go use the other bathroom.”

“I can't!” whines Kele. “My toothbrush is in this one.”

“Then use someone else's.”

“That's gross.”

Kele stomps away, and Lev gets back to the business at hand. The more he studies himself in the mirror, the less familiar his face seems, like pondering a word until the world loses all meaning.

Lev was always at his best when he had something to strive for. A clear-cut and discernible goal, where victory can be measured. Back in his innocent days, it was all about baseball. Catch the ball, hit the ball, and run. Even as a clapper he was an overachiever. A model representative of the cause. Until he chose not to detonate, that is.

With the granite intransigence of the Arápache Tribal Council, he knows he has lost his battle. The Arápache will not enter the war against unwinding. They will continue to object by merely closing it out, rather than taking it on.

Connor called him naïve, and he was right. After all he had been through, Lev was still foolish enough to believe that reason and resolve would prevail. “You are only one boy, with one voice,” Elina told him after his defeat in the Tribal Council. “If you keep trying to be a choir, you'll lose that voice, and then who will hear you?”

She hugged him, but he did not return the gesture. He didn't want consolation. It was
his
anger, and he wanted to own it. He needed to, because he knew that from that anger something new might grow. Something more effective than a pointless petition.

In the days since, Lev has given it much thought—all his thought, really—and has come to a conclusion. What he needs is a new approach that depends on no one but himself. He's done relying on the help of others, because others are too likely to disappoint. He must, once and for all, take matters into his own hands.

So he examines himself in the mirror, searching for a new resolve, even deeper than before. The things written on Lev's face are too complex to read. But he knows he can simplify them.

He reaches down to the counter and picks up the pair of scissors he brought into the bathroom. Without hesitation, he shears off his ponytail, dropping it to the ground. What
remains is a ragged straggly blond mop. Then he grabs a lock of hair as close to the roots as he can get, and he shears it off. Then he grabs another lock, doing it again and again, until the floor is covered with hair, and his head looks like a hayfield that has just been reaped.

Again Kele bangs on the door.

“Lev, I gotta get in!”

“Soon,” Lev tells Kele. “I'll be done soon.”

Lev puts down the scissors and lathers up the short, uneven stubble on his head. Then he picks up a razor.

•  •  •

These days it's mostly young Arápache men planning to leave the Rez that get themselves tattoos. Those who have decided to go out into a larger world but want to take with them a permanent reminder of where they came from. A symbol that they can display with pride.

There are only a few tattoo artists on the Rez, and only one with real talent. The rest are more paint-by-numbers types. Lev visits Jase Taza, the talented one. He waits outside the shop until the last of Jase's customers leaves.

Jase looks him over as he enters, not sure whether to be troubled or amused. “You're the Tashi'nes' foster-fugitive, aren't you? The one who caught that parts pirate, right?” he says.

Lev shakes his head. “Didn't you hear? I'm not a foster-fugitive anymore. I'm a full member of the tribe.”

“Glad to hear it.” Then he points to Lev's shaved head. “What happened to your hair?”

“It became unnecessary,” Lev tells him. It's the answer he gave the Tashi'nes, and anyone else who asks. His shaved head had troubled Elina, as he knew it would, but she allowed him his choice.

“What can I do for you?” asks Jase.

Lev presents him several pages and explains what he
wants. Jase looks the pages over, then looks at Lev dubiously. “You can't be serious.”

“Do I look like I'm joking?”

Jase looks at the pages over and over. “Are you sure you want this?”

“Positive.”

“This much ink, all at once?”

“Yes.”

“It's going to hurt. A lot.”

Lev has already considered that. “It
should
hurt,” he says. “It
needs
to hurt, or it doesn't mean anything.”

Jase looks around his shop, pointing to his many original designs. “How about a nice eagle, or a bear instead? You're not Arápache-born, so you can choose your own spirit animal. Mountain lions look good in ink.”

“I already have a spirit animal, and it's not what I want. I want this.” He points to the pages in Jase's hand.

“It will take many hours over many days.”

“That's fine.”

“And you'll have to pay me for my time—I don't come cheap.”

“I'll pay whatever it costs.” The Tashi'nes gave Lev spending money, enough to last a while. It's more than enough to pay Jase for his talent and his time. After that, he won't need Arápache currency, because it's no good off of the Rez.

He hasn't told Elina and Chal that he's leaving. He hasn't told anyone, because anyone he tells will try to talk him out of it or, at the very least, try to discover where he's going. It's crucial that no one knows that.

He pulls the money from his wallet and flashes it before Jase. Like everywhere else in the world, money talks.

Their first session begins a few minutes later. He allows Jase full creative expression.

“Where do you want to start?”

“Start at the top and work your way down,” Lev tells him. Then he leans back in the chair and closes his eyes, mentally preparing himself for the ordeal to come. . . .

Risa wakes to the breathy drone of some machine—a hiss that's both muffled and loud at once. She's on a king-size bed in a bedroom finished in polished redwood and brass. She's dizzy. Queasy. She feels as if the bed itself is shifting beneath her but she knows it's only the tranqs.

“Take your time,” says an unfamiliar male voice. “You've been tranq'd eight or nine times in succession. It will take you longer than usual to recover. Had it been me, I would have done it differently. I would have made it easier on you.”

The man speaks with a pearly lilt and an Eastern European accent. Russian perhaps. No, not quite, but something close.

As her eyes begin to focus, she sees him standing across the room, adjusting his hair in a full-length mirror. Slender, dark hair, well dressed. Risa pulls her knees up protectively, wondering what has transpired during her lapse of consciousness.

He glances over at her, and reading her body language, he chuckles.

“Do not worry,” he says. “No one has harmed you while you slept off the tranquilizers.”

Her head feels full of foam—fizz with no substance. She can only ask the obvious question. “Where am I?”

“Lady Lucrezia,” he answers. “My harvest camp.”

She has enough of the pieces now to pull at least some of
it together. The man at the antique shop was a parts pirate, and she is now in the hands of a black marketer. The parts pirate killed Jack—whom Risa promised she'd protect—whom she put directly in harm's way. And what of Sonia?

“I'm in a harvest camp . . . ,” she repeats, hoping to get more out of him.

“Yes, you and your friend Connor.”

She was not expecting to hear that. She shakes her head, not wanting to believe it. “You're lying! Connor wasn't there!”

Her captor looks at her curiously. “No? I thought you were captured together. But then, Nelson didn't explain the specific circumstances when he left you both with me.”

Nelson? Not the same Nelson . . .
But as she thinks of the parts pirate, she realizes that she knew that face—or at least half of it. Suddenly the entire room seems to heave, moving one way while Risa's stomach moves another. Without warning she's retching over the edge of the bed onto the floor.

The foreigner sits beside her, gently rubbing her back, and she doesn't even have the strength to recoil from him. “My name is Divan, and no harm will come to you while you're in my care.” He gives her club soda to sip from a minibar beside the bed. “So much to take in. No surprise there are things that can't be held down.” He leaves her with the club soda. “I'll have someone come and clean it up, not to worry. In the meantime, I have business to attend to. Sleep, Risa. We'll talk again when you're up to it.”

He goes to the door, but turns back just before he exits. “If you feel ill again, I find that looking out of a window helps.”

Once he's gone, Risa moves across the bed, and reaches for a curtain. Pulling it back reveals a window, but not the sort she was expecting. It's an oval window, and beyond it clouds. Nothing but clouds.

Simply put, the Antonov AN-225 Mriya is the largest flying object ever built. The six engines of the massive cargo jet boast more horsepower than Napoleon's entire cavalry, and when people talk of moving mountains, this is the plane that could do it. Only two of them were ever built. The first is in a Ukrainian air museum. The second is owned by wealthy Chechen entrepreneur Divan Umarov. Currently he is in negotiations to acquire the other one.

From the outside it looks like a 747 with glandular problems, but standing inside the jet's cavernous cargo hold can be a religious experience, because it rises around you with the breathtaking drama of a cathedral, but can get about eight miles closer to heaven.

The interior of the
Lady Lucrezia
, as Divan christened her, bears no resemblance to its original hollow shell, however. It was meticulously redesigned to be both a lavish residence as well as a fully functioning harvest camp, landing only to take on fuel and fresh Unwinds from Divan's international network of parts pirates, as well as to offload the various and sundry products of unwinding, worth so much more than the kids themselves.

Lately, he's spent more time airborne. Considering the ruthlessness of his enemies, it's safer to stay mobile as much as possible, and the current cargo, rare as to be almost priceless, requires his personal attention. It is a feather in his cap that he caught Connor Lassiter before the American Juvenile Authority or the despicable Dah Zey. He will remain on board, closely overseeing his business until such time as Connor Lassiter is sold at auction and his parts distributed to satisfied customers.

When Risa wakes again, she feels a bit stronger. Strong enough to explore and test her immediate surroundings. The bedroom is, of course, locked from the outside. A view from the window reveals that they are still at a high altitude, and it's the trailing end of twilight, or dawn—Risa has no concept of the actual time, or how many time zones they've flown through.