The Terminals (14 page)

She looked to Jake's drooping head and pressed her fingers at his neck. The fingers had long sharp nails, and Ming could feel their tips as if they pressed into her own throat. The woman slowly lifted Jake's chin so that she could peer into his eyes, turning his head left and then right.

“Now let me see you die …”

The groans of the children began again, cranking over like a tired, desperate engine.

Ming and Cordell shared a look, an identical, pleading stare.

Chapter 22

I'd told Pat to contact
Volt when we were half an hour from the target.

The symmetry bothered me. Cars were encircling the Gramsbeak grain elevator, just as they had the steel mill. Headlights illuminated the elevator, leaving room for Pat to land within their glare, just like at the steel mill. I didn't want to make an entrance this time. Amongst the officers and agents would be those with injured friends.

Morph's impending death left me feeling more alone than ever, and the verdict of Corporal Brant still rang in my ears—
never.
I pressed my palms against the sides of my head but could not shut Brant out. His daughter would have no memory of him. What was legacy but living on in the memory of others?

Night had drained color from the granary's battered walls. What paint remained, curled and flaked, drifting in the wind like ash from a fire. Four stories high, the granary loomed over rusted rails that divided the surrounding fields of wheat stubble. The grain reaped from these lands now moved on a wider gauge rail, some miles distant. The land was clear and stark. Here, no one but the crows would have heard the screams of the children.

There was one addition to the scene, a large bomb-squad truck.

The helicopter descended, swinging around the rusted funnel that hung over the rails and then landed.

“I'm going to stay and watch this time,” Pat commented and went to say something more, but I cut him off.

“Not planning a show,” I told him.

But it was too late for that. A procession of ambulances rumbled over the rutted track, whirling lights hazy red in the dust. Above them, the beam from the light beneath a helicopter's fuselage scythed through the air.

“This is heli TTV-6, tuning into Secret Unit 1, do you copy?”

“You've never had the pleasure of meeting Leica Takers, have you?” Pat asked.

“Takers? How the hell did she get a helicopter? I thought she was freelance.”

“If you mean by freelance, running her own media empire, then yeah, she's freelance.” He placed a finger to his chin and smirked. “And figuring out whatever you all do is her pet project. She's flying the incoming.”

“Damn the general.” The man had glossed over the fact Takers was a media baroness. He wanted me to fail.

“Secret Unit 1, come in,” the radio said, delight in the voice.

Pat spoke into his headset as he set the bird down. “This is go-fuck-yourself responding, over.”

“Nice,” I said.

“We don't get along,” he muttered as he flipped switches. “She once tried to follow me back to base, nearly took us both down.”

I alighted and a shadowy arm waved, backlit by an SUV's rooftop lights. I moved toward the lights, heart thudding when I saw that the person waving was Handso. The last I'd seen of him was him screaming naked through the steel mill. His moustache was gone and red welts spread out from beneath bandages laid across the left side of his face.

“Aren't we a pair?” The words sounded like a rake over gravel.

“You shouldn't be here, Handso,” a deep, familiar voice responded.

We both turned; Volt stood pinioned by light.

“You should be in the hospital or resting at home,” the agent continued and nodded at me.

“Can't rest till my job's done,” Handso replied.

I knew his type, this wasn't about the kids; it was about pride, about legacy.
Never.

Volt ignored him. I heard the slowing whomp of helicopter blades and wanted to enter the building before the reporter could show.

“So what are we doing here, Colonel?” Volt demanded.

I swallowed. “We have reason to believe that this is where the kids are being held.”

“I understand that, Colonel, but why are we here?” Volt's jaw set and his temples bulged. “How do you know? Before I risk more of my people, it's time you coughed up your source.”

Handso craned his neck, and I was aware of someone pushing their way past the officers that formed a perimeter.

“I can't tell you that,” I replied.

“Because it's illegal,” a shrill female voice rang out.

“Are we going to keep what's inside waiting?” I asked.

Handso chuckled, the sound breathy from the burned throat. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Leica made it to Volt's side and held up her press card like it meant something. She was diminutive. Thin, brown, almost black hair shone in a style with jagged bangs. Her eyes flashed coldly, contributing to an expression of perpetual suspicion. Her lips were full and set neatly on a pretty Hispanic face that I suspected was attractive to the two men, but she wasn't focused on them. She stared at me.

“What's the name of your unit, Lieutenant Colonel Christine Kurzow, born July 12, daughter to Staff Sergeant Jack Kurzow?” Her voice and face were a mismatch. The sound from her mouth should have been from a seven-foot harpy with talons for nails and a landmine up her ass.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

“Your unit commander is General Frank Aaron.” She paused for confirmation, which I refused to give. “What's the significance of the unit leader having been your father's commander, Colonel?”

“What?” I couldn't withhold surprise.

“Your father served with General Frank Aaron in Vietnam.” She grinned at me, and I knew I was being recorded. “That's where your father died, is it not? Vietnam?”

I began to respond and then turned away. “Agent Volt, for her safety, will you have the press escorted outside the perimeter, please?”

“Is this some sort of weird delayed nepotism?” Leica asked as an officer gripped her arm and led her away. This question relaxed me a bit; she was grasping at straws if she believed nepotism had anything to do with my recruitment. “What is the mission of your unit? Is it true that you work with a psychic?”

“Oh, ho!” Handso hooted. “A psychic? That might explain everything.”

“Everything if you believe in ghosts,” I snapped. “Tabloid reporter,” I added to Volt. I turned and started walking toward the granary, trying to compose myself.

“Where are you going, soldier?” Volt demanded.

Ahead of me, the granary's door groaned on its hinges.

I stopped and turned.

“I agree with you,” I said. “You should have proof of what's in there before sending your people in.” I waved at the gaping door. “So I'm going in.” I pulled out my gun, slid the flashlight beneath the barrel mount until it locked and then turned it on. I nudged the gun's safety to red. When Volt approached, I said definitively, “Alone.”

“Suicidal bitch,” Handso said.

“I'd advise against that.” Volt spoke with the air of confidentiality.

“Agent,” I said. “Half the men and women here were at the steel mill. I can feel the anger. I can't tell you from where we received our information, and after what happened at the mill, I don't know why you'd trust me. I also know that we can't afford to wait for clearance from a bomb squad. Too much time has passed already. So I'm going in. Alone. I'll check for live kids and then you can send in whatever cavalry you want.”

His bottom lip swelled as he ran his tongue beneath it.

“Take a radio,” Volt said and pressed one into my palm.

I snapped it on to my belt and turned without another word.

Chapter 23

“Ready!” Volt shouted to his
forces. Doors slammed and conversations ended.

The silence afterward harkened back to the steel mill and sent a shiver through me. But I was committed to entering the granary alone.

“Look alive,” Handso said, and the words hung awkwardly.

I panned my gun across the entry, but in the powerful headlights, the beam from my flashlight added little illumination. I could hear Leica ordering her cameraman about in the distance. The night was cool and clear, but sweat ran into my eyes and itched across my burn. At the door I paused and shone light through the crack and passed it along the bottom of the door frame, eyeballing for trip wires. Two concrete paths for truck tires led through the doors and into darkness. Seeing no danger, I slid inside, heart in my throat.

The air was laden with the scent of rotting grain mixed with bird shit and the dust of old beams. The doors opened on a bay large enough for a small truck to park and be filled or to offload grain.

I scanned the rafters, caught the green eyeshine of rats, and swiveled to the stairs, which led upwards. More vermin. Before ascending I crept past the bags of grain and inspected a belt of metal buckets that had once moved the loose wheat from the truck bed to the upper cupola for distribution into storage bins. Along the left side of the grain elevator were three doorways framed by two-by-fours. In the offloading area the floor was stone and hard pack dirt, but in the offices a shallow basement showed between the cracks and knotholes of floor boards. Thick wooden pillars supported the floor above.

Beyond the first door was a plank table that I was surprised didn't grace some gentleman farmer's kitchen. Little else remained of the offices but some leaves from the distant forest, a couple broken beer bottles, and a thick, scabrous rat. It stood its ground as I backed away from the threshold. The second room was entirely empty except for sacks of moldy grain. A few of the burlap bags spilled their guts onto uneven boards.

The final door, closest to the train tracks, opened onto a tube of metal that plunged through the floor. A trap door led downward and I pulled it open, coughing in the dust. I bit my lip, trying not to scream as rats scrabbled out and across the floor. A metal bin was set in the floor, still partially filled with wheat that obscured the base of the auger and a nest of gathered bits of tattered cloth and pink rat kittens. A chute ran outside to the rail for the offloading of grain. No bodies, but the sheer number of pests rattled me, as did the nest. It was woven with a variety of fabric: silk, wool, corduroy, cotton.

“Level one, clear,” I announced into the radio and hitched my pants higher to support its weight.

A pigeon burst from a rafter, and I caught it in the light.

I reminded myself that I didn't care about dying, and doing so eased the flutter of my heart. I scuffed up the steps, following tight-fitted boards on my left and the outer wall on my right through which lights from the gathered cars shone. The stairs moved straight past the second story with only a small landing, and then on to the third floor.

“Second clear, I think I'm following the storage bin upward. No bodies. Smells like shit.”

Halfway up the third flight of stairs, a long drip like hardened tree sap ran down the side of the storage bin. It was black and congealed. Something had found it long before and licked parts of it clean, but the dark stain remained.

“There's something on the fourth. No movement, but I have blood on the wall.”

“I'm sending men in,” Volt replied.

“After I complete the sweep,” I said. “There's nothing alive here, agent. Nothing worth dying for.” A knot formed in my chest at the realization as I climbed the stairs. The kids were dead. Ranks of green eyes ogled me from the top step. The fourth story was the peak of the building, the cupola. Here the stench had been caught by the rafters and stewed in the summer heat. I had to fight down my gorge. I kept the gun up, with my other sleeve over my mouth. When I reached a view of the cupola, I loosed a cry, muffled by my elbow crook.

Hanging from the ceiling was a forest of fishing line. A dozen lines refracted the light of my beam. At their tips, hooked like shrimp, were shriveled eyeballs. I swallowed my horror and traced the first line to the rafter, looking for a trigger mechanism. I tugged on a line and considered what Handso would say if he were watching. Nothing happened.

“We've filled half a dozen missing persons reports,” I said before moving deeper, threading through the lines that dangled from high beams.

Narrow boardwalks stretched across six storage bins, each fed by the pipe from a metal turnhead. The turnhead's mouth aimed at the bin furthest distant, and I imagined it to be Hillar's index finger pointing at whatever he'd left for me to see. My boots sucked at the blood that pooled over the floor. White guano coated the rafters and the handrails, but no bird roosted here. A rat slunk upon the turnhead and padded down the pipe to nose an eyeball.

There were no bodies save one laid out, face chewed away at the end of the walk. I already had a sense of where the rest would be. My light didn't reach the bottom of the first and second bins, but the third was half-f of grain, otherwise empty. I took the long way around the turnhead, jerking each of the fishing lines, attempting to trigger whatever trap Hillar might have set.

The rat leapt away and disappeared into the recesses of light. The fourth bin was empty, but the fifth, from which the smell billowed up, was a mess of arms and legs. The bodies were butchered into quarters, ribcages sawn in half. To escape my light, rats scurried into fleshy hollows. I gasped and turned away.

“Colonel, you have officers downstairs.” Volt's voice shocked me back. I fumbled for the radio, juggled it over the rail and caught it by the stub of its antenna.

“Bodies, Volt, I've got bodies.”

“Children?”

I forced myself to judge the lengths of severed arms and legs, to contemplate the cut of cloth and the whiskers on waxen faces.

“No children,” I said and stared at the lone corpse that had evaded the insult of quartering and then back at those in the bin, wondering what had singled him out. It was the body of a man. He wore a double-breasted, blue blazer, open to allow for his entrails to straggle across his groin and gray dress pants. His necktie was pulled half-off, the knot a tight fist. Brass buttons on his jacket reflected shiny and new. Maybe, just maybe, Hillar had made a mistake. “We're clear.”

I stumbled toward the stairwell, listening to the clatter of boots ascending. My head was fuzzy and full of the stench and horror. I leaned on the rail, feeling the wood bend beneath my weight. The head of the first bomb squad member bobbled as he climbed the remaining steps, gun holstered, armed only with a kit and a high-powered flashlight that lit the area brilliantly. He came into view and I saw him flexing his jaw, trying to keep from gagging at the smell. His eyes stared wildly at the baited fishhooks, understanding dawning with the emptying of his guts. He vomited over the edge, his dinner ringing out against the metal bottom.

I didn't say anything as he heaved the contents of his stomach into the storage bin. I pushed myself off the wall and headed down the steps, brushing against the officers who climbed them, some with wide open eyes—the scene was a long way from handing out speeding tickets and domestic disturbances.

In the fresh air, I drew deep breaths and gripped my knees. I hadn't witnessed such carnage since I'd seen the bodies of my soldiers scattered over a village square, where the branches of a stunted tree burned, and would continue to burn in my mind—
Never.
I started toward the edge of the cars, passing the helicopter empty of Pat.

Volt looked stoic, eyes unforgiving.

“I even tugged on the goddamn fishing line,” I told him. “Still, the whole building needs to be reviewed by the bomb squad now that we know no one's alive up there.”

“No kids, either. You've got us running around. More hours off the search—” He wrung his hands. “We know how much gas a school bus takes and can draw a radius of so many miles. This is too far out. These officers can't be searching when they're following your mysterious leads.”

“These leads are progress, Volt, and you know it.”

“Tell that to the kids.”

Flashes from a photographer flared out between gaps in the grain elevator's boards. Their presence surprised me, Volt tempting fate by allowing forensics in without a completed inspection by the bomb squad.

“You said it yourself. We don't have time. We need evidence now, Colonel,” he said and tapped his watch.

At each flash, I flinched. I wished I had climbed down and searched through the body parts, just to be certain.

I sat on the edge of his bumper, shutting my eyes to the scene, and rested while listening to radio chatter. It was clear that Charlie was being played in the deeps. We were into the final day where we might expect to find the children alive. Depending on conditions and how well Hillar had treated them before the diner fiasco, they could already be dead. No time remained for games. My eyes moved to the granary; perhaps inside we could find some clue to their whereabouts.

With an immense crack, the cupola exploded into fragments.

I cried out, twisted away, and threw up my arms. The billow of heat flowed past, replaced with a deeper chill. Splinters of wood rained over me, and heavy beams toppled end over end to lie charred and smoking. The body of a rat flopped to the ground before my feet.

Officers spilled out of the doors of the building, joined by a dark flood of vermin. The top half was a torch that spewed oily smoke into the black sky.

My mouth hung open. I didn't believe what I saw.

Yells and screams filtered through cracks in the barn board sides with the smoke. Officers and agents jammed the stairwell, fighting to reach safety, crushing one another in their panic.

My hands clenched so tight that my fingernails dug deep into my palms. The excited chatter of Leica rose above the crackling wood and calls. She gripped Handso's wrist—evidently she had been interviewing him when the bomb exploded. Volt began to move toward the elevator, but turned, perhaps realizing nothing could be done.

“No more help, not unless you give up your source,” Volt yelled. “Before you kill us all.” And he jogged closer to the heat, his arm a shield against the blaze; although I knew it must be painful. Better to be burning than near to me. My eyes teared and I didn't know if it was due to my failure or the hot smoke. I looked at my scarred wrists and then into the flames.