River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053) (25 page)

48

HEISE HOT SPRINGS. OCTOBER 29.

6:45 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

At dusk the skies were spitting a granular snow. Jake had moved the Charger even farther down the dark country road, but where he could still see the intersection with the highway. The Lincoln hadn't left the complex.

“Just another minute,” Divya said. “I'll try Wright's land line.”

Jake was still catching his breath from the adrenaline and the run.

“Yes?” Wright was nonplussed.

“Sir, I have Jake Trent on the line. We have a development.”

“Go ahead.”

Jake spoke up. “Less than ten minutes ago, I witnessed a shooting among Canart, his security guard, and a person I believe to be Meirong Xiao.”

“Casualties?”

“I don't know. I believe the security guard fled.”

Divya took over. “I think it's time to activate a team out there. I'd be willing . . .”

Wright didn't let her finish. “Jake, what's the current situation?”

“Two of the three appear to remain in the building. I still have visual of one of their vehicles.”

“Are they armed?”

“Safe to assume so.”

“Are you armed?”

“Yes.”

“You believe the senator and Meirong remain in the office?”

“That's my best guess.”

Wright took a moment to think. “Are you comfortable resuming surveillance?”

Jake thought,
Whoever
is left inside heard the shots in the lot and
knows they are being watched.
“If it will help to get Charlotte Terrell home, absolutely.”

“We're working on that as we speak.”

Jake wondered if this was true. “What do you want me to do?”

“You need to find out who was hit in the shootout. If Meirong is dead, we have to make sure her father doesn't find out. If he does, he has no reason to give us Charlotte Terrell.”

Jake hung up the phone, made sure it was on silent, and worked his way back to the building. He hunkered down for a few moments in the same bush, hoping to see Meirong. The light in the office was still on, but no silhouettes appeared in the window.

He had to get closer. If he could get to the window without being noticed, he might be able to catch a glimpse of the office through the cracks in the window shade.

It was now a quarter after seven. The arctic air had started to settle in. High, mired clouds emancipated swollen flakes—the
largest yet from the early season crop of storms. The plains above the South Fork of the Snake were slowly filling in, obscuring the crop rows and tractor paths.

Still no movement from within the office. The building was silent. The wind that came in with the front had died off, and Jake could see tracks from the office door toward the spot where the Taurus had been parked. They were large—a man's foot for sure, but Jake couldn't be sure whether it was the guard or Canart himself who'd taken the Taurus. He preferred to encounter the senator, if it came to that. He was less physically imposing.

Jake crept closer until his back was against the building's aluminum exterior. He was shielded from the falling snow by a small awning. He looked out to the parking lot and then right toward the highway to make sure the Taurus wasn't returning.

I should be so lucky.

The building blocked his view of the Taurus, but Jake could hear the new snow betraying the guard's intentions. It squeaked and cried under his tires. The car was reappearing slowly, lights off.

Jake shuffled along with his back against the cold metal toward the far corner, where he could hide. The Taurus came into view around the opposite corner and made a sweeping turn to face the battered concrete where Jake had hid only a few minutes before.

The security guard stopped the car and flicked on the high beams. The big flakes came heavier, immobilizing his senses; he couldn't see much beyond thirty feet out.

The guard got out of the car, his back to Jake. He was checking the landscaping, looking for confirmation that Jake was dead. Jake knew the man wasn't going anywhere. It was his duty to stay between the senator and whoever had been in the bushes. He was an obstacle Jake would have to go through, not around.

Jake was creeping up behind the figure before he knew it. Pure instinct. The man crouched just at the end of the high beams' reach, looking for blood on the snow.

FUBAR
,
the military called it. Canart and Meirong knew there was a threat just outside. The security guard was on to him too. Tactical measures were a thing of the past. For the first time in many years, Jake was forced to be something other than human—a machine on a mission.

“For the chief!” Jake shouted.

The man startled and turned.

Crack!

When Jake approached the body, the look of surprise still showed on his face. He appeared perfectly lifelike, but for the tiny entry wound between his eyes.

49

HEISE HOT SPRINGS. THE SAME NIGHT.

9 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

Jake took a deep breath. He was just a short counterclockwise spin away from being able to see inside the office, where he would take a quick glance, and then spin back, in case of gunfire.

Jake started to move, the Mariner enveloped by both hands and held low, inches from his belt buckle.

“Drop it.”

A voice from behind. The doorway. A
female
voice. Pleasant except for its mandate. His target had turned the tables. She'd hidden elsewhere in the lab after the first spate of gunfire, explaining why Jake hadn't seen any more figures in the office.

Stupid.
He was rusty.

“Drop it.” Again. The soft air of a Chinese accent. “Don't turn around.”

Jake did as she asked, bending down and placing the Glock on the carpet.

“Keep your hands up and walk backward.”

Again Jake submitted, slowly walking toward her with his hands up. He knew better than to mount a counterattack. There would be better opportunities when his captor's adrenaline had flushed through her system. For the next ten minutes or so, she would have a hair trigger—a shoot first, ask questions later attitude.

Meirong led Jake into the office, the room with the window. She'd killed the lights. Jake couldn't see inside, but he could hear labored breathing. A wounded man.

She was gathering some items from the desk's drawer with the light of her phone. Jake heard the jangle of a key set.

If she was going to lock him in somewhere—a closet or a storeroom—his chances of escape were slim.

“C'mon.” She pushed Jake from behind down a short hallway that opened up into a workshop of sorts.
Ground zero? Was
this where they were developing the GPSN?
The space was empty, and only the dim auxiliary fluorescent lights were on.

She steered Jake along the left wall of the laboratory to a door in the far corner. Meirong ordered him to sit on a cluttered desk and went to unlock the closet.

She was smaller than he'd realized, probably under ninety pounds. Her dress was plain, a white blouse and black dress pants. She made brief eye contact with him as she spun around from unlocking the door. He tried to detect something, anything that would give him an idea of her mental state, so that he could use it to his advantage. Her face was apathetic and her breathing normal. She didn't seem afraid.

“Stay there.” Meirong pointed the gun squarely at Jake's forehead and then quickly turned to pull a stack of boxes from the electrical closet to make room for her prisoner. He wanted to sack
her, make his move while she had her back turned, but she was still on edge. It was too dangerous.

“Get in.”

Jake's window of opportunity was closing. He walked into the tiny room.

Meirong didn't slam the door shut. Instead, she sat back on the desk where Jake had just been and relaxed a bit but kept the barrel of the gun trained on him.

“Who are you?”

Jake had to think quickly. “I'm here to protect you.”

She laughed. “Did my father send you?”

Jake sensed hostility in her voice. “No. Canart was going to hurt you. Take advantage of you.”

Another chuckle. “Everyone takes advantage of me.”

“We are trying to set you free.”

“And you are who? The American government?”

It seemed to Jake she knew a hell of a lot more than the CIA was aware of.

Before Jake could speak again, she affirmed his suspicion. “I know what I am worth. To any country, not just China.”

“I am here to help you, not enslave you.”

“The senator did not have me enslaved.”

She was loyal to Canart. Jake could use that to his advantage. “I can help him, you know. I am a trained medic”—which was a lie.

“Stay here.” She was up quickly and slammed the closet door.

He'd missed his chance. Now, Jake's only company was the buzzing electricity. Modems, circuit breakers, and phone routers. There was no ceiling fixture in the room, but the various pieces of equipment in the closet emitted thin beams of colored light from their power buttons.

Jake took a seat on the floor and felt a tug in his pocket. His phone. Meirong had neglected to confiscate it. He texted Divya.

Meirong has me captive. I'm okay. Believe Canart was the one shot.

Her response came quickly.

Stay safe. Calling Wright.

Jake used the phone's flashlight app to look around the closet for anything useful. There wasn't much. Two cases of printer paper, a mop, and a spool of Cat 5 internet cable.

He held the phone up to examine the doorknob. It was a traditional lever knob with a simple key lock from the inside. Unusual, but not unheard of—key locks were considerably cheaper than the inside toggle-lock variety.

He turned and inspected the rear wall where the electronics were mounted. The circuit breaker was centered on the wall. Jake opened the gray steel swing. The top switch was marked
MAIN
.

The flashlight on the phone turned off as a text arrived from Divya.

If you are not in danger, stay put for now. We are tracing your cell location.

Jake shook his head in frustration. They were using him to find Meirong.

I am in the big building on the northeast corner of Heise Road and 26.

Stay with her. Wright's orders

was all Divya responded.

Dammit.

Jake looked back up at the circuit breaker and decided it couldn't hurt. At the very least, it would improve his chances to interact with Meirong again and disarm her.

He pulled the switch from left to right, killing the power to the entire building. An unnerving silence replaced the buzz of technology.

It took a few minutes longer than he expected. When Meirong finally opened the door, there was blood on her hands. She slipped past Jake, gun trained on him, and flipped the switch back to the left. When she came back past him, he could hear her breath, shaky and fearful. She was losing her cool.

The equipment on the wall beeped and blinked as it started up.

“Don't do that again.”

“I told you I can help. He's losing too much blood.”

Had the prodigy shed a tear? Maybe it was sweat. Her face was ashen, her eyes desperate and vacant.

“Get up.” She led Jake at gunpoint back through the laboratory and into the front office.

Senator Rick Canart was on his side with his knees drawn toward his chest, almost into a fetal position. He was holding his breath now, clearly in pain, and letting it escape in a swift huff that was half-exhale, half-moan. He didn't regard Jake or Meirong.

“Left side,” she said, going to him.

“I have to move you again.” Meirong grimaced with him. She was more focused on her lover's condition than she was on Jake. He was going to use that to his advantage.

Jake helped Meirong move the portly politician to his back. His breath came shallow and fast now. Rapid breathing and heart rate.
Hypovolemic shock. His organs were dying. The pooling blood around him hadn't spread into an expansive tarn as it did in the movies. Instead, it absorbed into his clothes and rested in small clotted puddles on the laminate floor.

Estimating his blood loss at more than two liters, Jake didn't give the senator any real chance of surviving the gunshot, but he kept that to himself. The wound was several inches below his heart, in the left middle of the abdomen. Canart couldn't speak or move on his own, other than occasional winces of pain.

“I need clean water and some clean towels,” Jake said

Meirong was still too sharp to leave him alone in the room. “Let's go.” She walked him at gunpoint to one of the lab tables, under which sat a file cabinet with two drawers.

“In there.”

Jake bent down and opened the drawer and grabbed a roll of paper towels. “This won't be enough.”

“It's all we have.”

“He needs a hospital.”

“No.” She gestured for Jake to stand up, and then led him back into the office. From behind the desk, Meirong pulled several bottles of drinking water.

Jake opened the senator's dress shirt and began wiping around the wound. If Canart could feel the pressure, he didn't show it. His eyes were only slightly open on their upper halves, and they stared up toward the ceiling.

“I need to apply pressure to the wound. Do you have anything we can wrap?”

Meirong silently backed off, the gun aimed at Jake, and pulled a sleeping bag off the couch adjacent to the desk.

“I need a knife.”

She shook her head.

“Then I need you to cut strips from the bag, four inches wide and long enough to tie around his torso.”

She went back to the desk, grabbed a pair of scissors, and did as Jake asked.

“Bring it to me.”

Finished, Meirong brought the first tether over.

“When I lift him, slide it under.” After she did as he asked, Jake tied the compress of wadded paper towels in place with the strip of nylon from the sleeping bag.

“Good. Now go cut some more.”

The senator moaned and closed his eyes.

“He's dying!” Meirong pleaded, and moved toward them.

Jake stopped her. “Keep cutting.”

The life was seeping out of the embattled senator. Not that it mattered to Jake. He was still a machine with one goal in mind: saving Charlotte Terrell.

When she came back with two more strips from the bag, Jake made his move. He reached up to take the makeshift bandages but instead grabbed the prodigy's left hand, which held the pistol. He forced the barrel up and away, where it harmlessly discharged into the drop ceiling. A flurry of mineral fibers fell down on them.

The scuffle lasted no more than a couple of seconds. Jake stood up and aimed the pistol at Meirong, who was on her knees beside the senator.

She bent over him and let out a cry. “He's not breathing!”

“I'm sorry.” Jake caught his breath, bent down next to the hysterical woman, and grabbed the nylon, which he repurposed as constraints.

“You need to stand up.”

Meirong was disconsolate, hands trembling with adrenaline and the emotional shock of her lover's death. Jake put her hands behind her back and tied them. Then he walked her over to the departed senator's swivel chair and tied her to it by her waist.

“Goddammit!” He didn't mean to say it aloud.
How the hell did I get here?
Adrenaline waning, the human was creeping back into him.

He wiped the blood from his hands on the remaining paper towels and took out his phone. He was surprised to find his own hands trembling.

“Divya. I have Meirong. The senator is dead.” The prodigy whimpered at Jake's words.

As Jake listened to Divya's instructions, he pulled aside the blinds and checked the parking lot.

“Got it.” Jake ended the call.

He turned and untied Meirong. “We're leaving.”

“Let me stay here with him.”

Jake didn't respond. He led Meirong around Senator Canart's body and through the office door to the hallway, opened the door to the parking lot, and looked around once more. Still empty. The senator's secrets had worked against him. His staff and family, all in the dark, weren't able to save him. He scrambled out and grabbed his Mariner from the carpet and returned to Meirong.

“Let's go.” Jake hurried her through the lot, around the corner of the building, and to the street where the Charger was parked. He loaded Meirong into the passenger seat and took off south toward the highway.