Deadlock (36 page)

“Sounds like
A Clockwork Orange
,” Laura said.

“In reverse,” Hutch agreed. “Instead of using images of violence to try to make people so sick of it they become nonviolent, Page uses it to intentionally create people who thrive on it.”

“No,” Michael said. He looked from one to the other. “You don't get it.”

Hutch narrowed his eyes at him.

“Outis isn't desensitizing us,” Michael said. “They're
confusing
us.”

“I don't understand,” Laura said.

“They make it so we don't know when we're really killing or when it's a game. We don't even know
who
we're killing.” He told them about the hit on the rebel leader, and how his team had wiped out a family, children and all.

Laura covered her mouth as he spoke. Hutch, knowing something about Nichols's family, put faces to Michael's words. He found himself taking quick, short breaths and forced himself to slow down.

The last few minutes of Michael's tale was told through his tears. He stuttered through how his team had ostracized him and how he suspected his own inability to distinguish reality from fantasy. He turned and dropped his face into a pillow. His shoulder hitched up and down as the intensity of his wrenching sobs rose and dipped.

Hutch touched Laura's arm. He whispered, “Blind adherence to orders doesn't work in war. When we give a soldier a weapon, we expect some sort of . . . I don't know, moral double-checking. Otherwise, what's the difference between a nuclear bomb and a squad of killers wiping out everything in their path?”

“Deceiving them takes away their ability to chose, to agree or disagree with their orders,” she said. “Making people think they're shooting adults who mean them harm when they're actually killing children is simple trickery. Evil, but simple.” She watched Michael weep.

“But confusing the soldiers makes a sort of twisted sense,” she continued. “It allows the soldier to believe, rightly or wrongly, that he hasn't done anything wrong. All the atrocities he's committed weren't real, even if some or all of them were. It's an escape hatch. Like at least one weapon in a firing squad containing a blank cartridge. It makes all of the executioners better shots, because it eliminates the ‘taking life' aspect of the task. Each chooses to believe he was the one with the blank.”

Hutch gestured toward the connecting door, and Laura went to it.

“Michael,” Hutch said, “Laura, the kids, and I are in the next room. We're going to get some sleep. Knock on the connecting door if you need anything. You're not our prisoner, you know that. You can leave anytime you want. But if you stay, we'll find help for you. Whatever it takes. All right?”

Michael turned his head. His eyes were red and wet. He nodded.

Laura opened the door, and they slipped into the next room. Macie and Dillon were lying on the bed, watching a kids' show. They both smiled, then turned back to the television. They were wiped out. Hutch locked the connecting door. Laura leaned around him to check it.

“I feel sorry for him,” she said quietly. “But he still scares me.”

Hutch sighed. “Between his knowledge of Outis and Julian on the inside, I'm starting to think we can really do this, that we can get Logan back.”

“Of course we can,” she said. “You still think we should drive up there, to Washington?” She shook her head. “It seems like such a long shot.”

“I need to get to either Page or Logan. I have no clue where Logan is, but I do know Page is at the compound.”

Laura blinked slowly and yawned.

“Get some sleep,” he said, rubbing her shoulder. “I'm going to find a pay phone and call Larry. I'm hoping he can pick up a few things for us.”

“Like what?”

“Cash, mostly,” Hutch said. “And we can all use a change of clothes.” He unzipped his leather jacket and held it open for her to see the shirt underneath, which looked as though he'd drenched it in a brownish-maroon liquid.

“Hutch!” she said.

The kids turned to look.

“Daddy!” Macie squealed. She began scrambling over Dillon to reach her father.

“Whoa, honey,” Hutch said, holding up his hand. “It's not my blood. Not the majority of it, anyway.” He made eye contact with Laura and nodded toward the connecting door. “Michael's dad.”

Laura pinched the bloody material over his chest and tugged on it. It resisted, then pulled away with a Velcro sound.

“Oww,” Hutch said.

Laura grimaced. She said, “There's a gas station and convenience store up the street. I bet they have a cheap T-shirt.”

He nodded. “We'll top off the tank too. Let's get some sleep and plan on heading out tonight.”

Laura bobbed her head up and down. Her hair fell over her face, and she looked utterly exhausted.

“It's going to be okay,” Hutch said. “You'll see.”

She smiled at him. “I'm supposed to tell
you
that.”

“When I forget to say it,” Hutch said, “then it's your turn.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

When Logan stepped out of the bathroom, Emile was sitting on one of the room's two beds, flipping though news channels. A machine gun leaned against the wall by the door, within Emile's grasp. A canvas tote bag occupied the bed behind him. He looked Logan up and down.

“I need a belt,” Logan said. He was holding a wad of excess waistband in front.

Emile looked at the other bed. Logan followed his gaze and screamed. Two bodies lay on top of the bedspread, shoulder to shoulder. He recognized one of them as the man who had tied him up: Anton. One of his forearms was bent as though he had another elbow there. Something under his shirt didn't look right either; it was bumpy and poking up where it shouldn't be. His face was battered and bruised. Someone—Emile, most likely—had wiped some of the gore away, but a lot remained.

The other guy Logan had seen earlier as well. He was the corpse from the back of the van, the one Logan had kept rolling into and trying not to look at. It was this guy's blood that had soaked Logan's pant leg. The nub of an arrow protruded from the left side of his neck. It was broken off before the fletchings, probably to make the body easier to move. Brownish goop—dried blood, Logan knew—covered half his face, his left arm and chest.

Logan started hyperventilating again.

“Knock it off,” Emile said. “They're bodies, kid. You'll leave yours behind one day too.”

“What . . . what happened to them?”

“Isn't that obvious?” Emile punched the remote. Another news station came on.

“Why are they here?”

“Where should they be?”

“Not
here
. Your car?”

Emile flipped to another channel.

The bodies hovered at the corner of Logan's vision, like ghosts trying to sneak up on him. He turned his back to them. He said, “Could you cover them up? Please?”

Emile threw an exasperated glance at him. He sighed. He stood and walked between the beds. When no sounds came, Logan looked. Emile was frozen there, just staring at the dead men.

“They were your friends,” Logan said.

Emile's face became hard, the way it had been when he'd come into the bathroom to cut Logan loose. He said, “They were soldiers.”

He bent over Anton and unbuckled the man's belt. He yanked it free of the loops and held it out to Logan.

“I don't want it,” Logan said.

“Don't be a baby.”

Logan took it, examined it for blood, didn't find any. He threaded it around his waist, but it was too long to do any good.

Emile grabbed it. His knife came out and sliced off a foot of leather. With the knife's tip, he made an extra hole where Logan needed it. He turned from Logan, sheathing the knife. He moved the canvas tote from the unused bed to the floor, pulled off the bedspread, and billowed it over the bodies.

Logan crinkled his nose. “Are they going to . . .”

“What?”

“You know, start
smelling
?”

Emile went back to the end of the bed, snatched up the remote, and sat. Staring at the screen, he said, “Not as bad as you did in the tub.” His boot bumped a white paper bag on the floor. He picked it up, said, “Here,” and tossed it at Logan. It was a fast-food breakfast: hash browns, a sausage-and-egg biscuit sandwich, a croissant. Logan's stomach reminded him how much it wanted that food. But the bodies on the bed . . .

It felt like someone had dropped a bowling ball on his gut.

Better eat
, he thought.
Who knows when you'll get more food.

He stepped near the bathroom door, where he couldn't see the bodies. He sat on the carpet and put the bag in his lap. Once he bit into the biscuit sandwich, he forgot about who else . . .
what
else . . . besides Emile shared the room. He shoved it in as fast as he could.

“You're going to choke,” Emile said.

Logan licked his lips and nodded. He squinted at Emile. “How old are you?”

Emile hit a button, muting the television's volume. He said, “What's it to you?”

“You don't seem very old.” Logan checked the bag: no napkins. He wiped his lips on the bag.

“So?”

Logan shrugged. He grimaced at the pain in his neck and shoulder. “Doing all this,” he said. “Kidnapping, guns, almost getting killed.”

“That's what soldiers do.”

“
Kidnapping
? I mean,
kids
? In the United States? You sound American. Are you American?”

Emile scowled. “Shut up and eat.”

Logan chewed. He watched Emile glaring at the TV screen with the volume turned off. He said, “What time is it?”

Emile brought his wristwatch up. “Eight thirty.”

“What are we going to do?”

“You're going to shut up, and I'm going to get some sleep.” He glanced at Logan. “Don't think that means you're getting away. I'm going to tie you up again.”

Logan felt sick.

“Not like you were,” Emile said. “If I can trust you to be quiet, I'll just—” His eyes roamed the room. He indicated the heating/air-conditioning unit under the window next to the door. “I'll just zip tie you to that. You can sleep on the floor.”

Zip tie
, Logan thought. In his mind, he'd been calling it ziplock. The vocabulary lesson helped him not think about sleeping in the same room with dead people. He said, “Then what?”

“Then we'll see.” Emile waved the remote like a wand at the television and clicked it off. He stood up. “You done?”

Logan pushed half a croissant in his mouth. He nodded. He got up, crumpled the bag, and tossed it into a wastebasket.

Emile was fishing through the tote bag. He pulled out a handful of zip ties. He said, “Hit the head, dude. I don't want you waking me up, and I don't have any more pants for you.” He knelt beside the bulky contraption that would be Logan's prison for the next few hours— better than the way he'd been hogtied in the bathtub—and began searching for anchor points.

Logan continued chewing. He wiped his fingers on the T-shirt. He wondered how someone as young as Emile could wind up where he was, doing what he did.

Emile spotted him watching. “Hey,” he said, pulling out his knife, twisting the point into the air-conditioning unit. “We're, like, getting along and everything, right? Kind of two guys hanging out?” He waggled the knife back and forth between the two of them. “But you need to remember that's not the way it is. If you try to get away, if you try to signal somebody . . . anything like that, I will kill you. Won't even hesitate. You understand?”

Logan caught a whiff of something unpleasant and thought it was coming from one of the bodies.

“Well?” Emile said.

Logan nodded. He went into the bathroom and shut the door. Emile reminded him not to lock it. He frowned at his image in the mirror. Just in time, he turned to the toilet, lifted the lid, and puked up his breakfast.

FIFTY-NINE

Shortly before midnight, Hutch edged the XTerra to the heavy gate at the entrance to the
Denver Post'
s parking garage. He waved his pass card in front of a reader, and the gate rattled open. The next day's issue would have been put to bed about half an hour before. Evening-shift employees were leaving, but the paper's graveyard shift kept a good number of cars in the garage through the night. Hutch steered the SUV onto an ascending spiral ramp.

They had slept through the afternoon and early evening. None of them had truly rested the night before—the kids a little in the car, and Michael, though Hutch wasn't sure you could count getting knocked out as sleeping. The crash that followed adrenaline-fueled activity and emotional chaos, like intense fear, had hit them hard. A few times during the day, Hutch had awakened. When he had checked on Michael in the next room, the boy had seemed to be sleeping soundly, normally. Sometime after Dillon and Macie had turned on the television, and Laura had gone out for food, Michael had rapped gently on the connecting door. He had climbed on the bed with the younger children and sat with his back against the headboard, quietly watching cartoons.

Laura and Hutch had decided to get a late start, which allowed them to rest more and meet Larry when the chance of the building being watched was smallest. They would drive through the night and assess their energy level in the morning, and decide whether one of them was up to continuing or it was time to find a place to rest. Hutch had argued for coffee and NoDoz until they reached Page's compound, until they rescued Logan, but Laura had made the point that he would have to be in better condition when they arrived in Washington than he was in now.

Hutch had agreed, but had said, “Every second Logan's gone feels like a lifetime of failing him.”

“Don't go to a movie,” Laura had said, giving his arm an encouraging squeeze. “But sleep when you need to, eat when you can. Staying sharp and fit is part of what you have to do right now.”