Buy ReWire now on Amazon for only $3.99
Chapter 90
Jack’s foot caught on a root. He tripped and fell onto rocks covered by a thin foot of snow. He fell again trying to get up and this time landed with his weight on the pack. He could picture the spark arcing across the three-millimeter gap, hear the sizzling snap of the Christmas tree lights shorting out and smell the Fourth of July smoke that meant he was dead.
He lay resting before his certain death, thankful he could finally give up. It had been a good life, mostly. He’d created wealth, providing jobs for thousands. He’d been a good boss, a bad husband, a loving brother, and a decent friend. He had failed this last test, but given it everything he had and more. Lee and Uncle Chin, Sir Ian, Captain Yan, Bob, Alice, Meghan and Dvora would see it through. They’d have to.
His last thoughts were of Lee leaning over to spoon-feed him soup. He wished he had more time with her and wondered why he had to find her at the end. He said all his good-byes. After a minute on his watch, he stood up, brushed himself off and kept walking. The trigger mechanisms weren’t as sensitive as he thought.
JACK PITCHED THE TENT on the north side of the ridge that ran a hundred yards west of the creek. Even with infrared, he wouldn’t be in line of sight. If they had drones, he would already have been a prisoner or dead. He lay out the pads and the two sleeping bags, placing the large inside the extra-large.
The wet suit he found in the boathouse, racked next to the water skis, had a tag that said large and it was a still a size too small for him. He had taken a size-medium suit as well to use as patch material. With the Gerber, needle, thread, and more patience than he thought he had, he’d tailored the suit large enough to squeeze into.
Wet suit meant letting near-freezing water next to your skin and using that water as an insulator against cold tons of water. He tried not to think about how cold he already was, much less how cold he was going to be. The water in the creek was colder than liquid water should get. He had always thought of cold as a particular kind of thing and one he had a handle on.
Jack jumped back out of the creek the first two times he stepped in, the shock of the cold more than his conscious mind would overcome. Jumped wasn’t really the right word. Staggered might be the right word. Maybe the right word was flailed. He rationalized that he could take the compound with a frontal assault. He pictured himself explaining to the authorities that it was all a silly mistake, that he’d never killed anyone. Then he could tell them about the conspiracy and, of course, they’d believe him.
He stepped back into the stream. At first it was just too cold and then it was a burning ache, as the cold worked further into the flesh of his feet and legs. Finally it seemed to freeze the nerves and bones themselves with a pain that radiated back out. His feet were too numb to feel commands from his mind. He lay down in the water and floated, tied to his bundle of party favors.
Jack shook with violent shivers. He willed his fevered body to be still. The low fence marking the end of the runway should be to his left now, the landing lights still off. He hadn’t seen a plane land there yet. The gauges on the airstrip’s fuel tanks showed full.
The questions about timer settings had him playing guessing games with himself. At first the mechanical clocks limited him to twelve hours maximum. That didn’t give him enough time. He finally remembered the lesson on how to use digital watches to close the circuit. Now he had thirty-four hours.
He planned to stop fifty feet from where the creek cut under the Church’s fence. He floated right past the fence. His frozen body didn’t respond to his brain. He tried to stop many times over the next hundred yards. Finally his feet moved. He couldn’t stand up. In another two hundred yards he’d be gently swept out into a mostly frozen lake by a barely moving puddle.
He wore Gore-Tex gloves inside Gore-Tex mittens so his hands were the only relatively warm part of him. He reached up and grabbed the bottom of the bridge and dragged himself hand-over-hand to the bank. It took long minutes before he could stand on the yards-square pebble beach below the eastern bridge support.
Small flakes of icy snow grew larger as the wind dropped off. His notes from the previous night said curfew at ten. It was three hours past that. He had stitched a robe together, hoping it looked enough like one of their priest/guards to sow doubt. The voices he heard over the radio were a mix of American, South African, and Japanese. He could fake an effective imitation of South African-accented English. He knew enough Japanese to find his way around and order food and such, but his accent was terrible.
He stepped out confidently, carrying the bundle over his shoulder. Out for a walk after curfew would be easier to explain than a low-crawling stranger. He waited at the southeast corner of the Church until the guards turned the corner around the lodge. His second target was the main valve for the propane pipe into the lodge. Third target was the transformer that stepped power down for the microwave relays. These two targets were only a hundred feet apart.
He counted to twenty seconds to make sure the guards were far enough away and dashed to the corner of the house, sliding the charge as far under the valve as he could. He tried not to think about how exposed the bomb was, then sprinted for the transformer, frozen feet catching on nothing. Then he followed the guards around the corner. They disappeared into the snowfall around the northwest side of the lodge. He breathed damp cold air, willed himself not to cough, and planted another charge.
JACK HAD MISTIMED the changing of the guard. All four of them stood on the bridge above his hiding-place. This group all spoke English. Most of what they said blew away on the wind. They planned to borrow the minivan for the drive to the Doo Da Ranch for a little R and R. There was a hooker they wanted to visit again.
“Rebecca could suck a golf ball through twenty feet of garden hose,” carried clearly through the rising wind, along with laughter.
Dizziness and violent shivering let him know his fever had come roaring back. If they didn’t leave soon he’d have to kill them all or freeze to death in the snow. Finally they split up. The pair stuck with the 3:00 AM shift, resigned to their fate, hunkered down in their robes and shuffled off to their route around the grounds.
On the way upstream, he stayed to the west side of the creek. He hadn’t even crawled fifty feet before he knew he wasn’t going to make it. The current was much stronger than it seemed when he floated downstream. He tried the east side of the creek and it was even deeper, each step near his last. He moved back to the west side and was trying to climb out, ready to take his chances on discovery, when he discovered the shelf running just under the surface of the water.
The shelf was almost a foot wide and only a foot and a half below the surface. He never did figure out what trick of current created that shelf. It saved his life. His lungs were taxed to their limit by his crouching walk through the water. By the time he fell into camp the fluid in his lungs made fighting the urge to cough too much of a battle.
JACK CRUMPLED THE chemical hot packs, slamming them down on the stone-hard ground, trying to mush the crystals together with numb hands. He had to get his feet warm and dry. His fingers weren’t up to something as complicated as bootlaces. The Gerber sliced through the laces like they were fresh pasta. He was very careful not to let the too-sharp knife anywhere near major arteries or veins. He didn’t want to look at his feet. Some trick of circulation made them different colors.
The coughing fit took his mind off his feet for a while. The rag he coughed into was thick with red phlegm. God damn it! God damn it! He had to live another day and a half. He couldn’t die in a fucking tent.
He force-fed himself hot Gatorade and took more Keflex. He rested sitting up, knowing if he lay down he might drown in the fluid in his lungs. He couldn’t remember medicine enough to know whether he should try to cough up the fluid in his lungs or suppress the cough. His body didn’t give him a choice, the cough bending him double, the cracked ribs an exclamation mark.
He had a twofold dilemma. Maybe threefold? His dilemmas were folding all over the fucking place. What was that ringing? He shook his head. Big mistake, but the fall into the snow cleared his mind. As he considered all his folding dilemmas, he worked to hide his tracks. If he thought too long about all the process it would take to get back to base camp and then back into the compound…. The urge to lie down in the snow was strong.
He was almost out of time. His body would last, at best, another day or two without good medical care. He needed to be inside the compound, near Lee within…
Jack looked down at the watch. Why was it so hard to focus? He needed to be inside the compound and within reach of Lee in twenty-six hours and counting. The easiest option was to turn himself in and bargain for Lee’s freedom as well as his own. He didn’t think anyone would buy the surrender thing. They were a suspicious lot.
He could just walk up to the gate, hands in the air and say, “I have evaded your patrols, killed your men, escaped an intense manhunt, but oops, tired of that! Giving up now! See no tricks, nothing up my sleeve, honest. Trust me!”
This approach had a big problem of believability and an even bigger problem of bullet holes. Another approach was to be captured breaking in. This plan had less of a problem with believability and even more of a problem with bullet holes. He wished he had body armor. While he was wishing he might as well wish again for that platoon of combat veteran Rangers.
His only real option was to sneak in and get caught. He was so very tired. He only spent an hour or two cleaning up his base camp. He knew they would eventually find his work and figure everything out. If he had his way the bad guys wouldn’t have an eventually. The thought of floating down that icy creek again was too much so he stopped thinking about it. He cleaned and hid and looked and shivered and bolted a new lock on the back door of the dorm. He swept his path with a pine bough to clear his most recent tracks. At the rate the snow was falling, all signs of his path would be gone in minutes.
THE SEARCHLIGHT PINNED Jack to the snow. He low-crawled as fast as his shivering body would go, but he couldn’t escape the beam from the searchlight in the steeple tower. The field was too open and he was too sick. He had to try. He slid into the cover of the digger pine and pulled the bag with the bombs out of the rucksack. His numb hands wouldn’t work. He pounded them together, dug a little snow cave and shoved the bag inside. He broke a bow off the pine, brushed the snow to hide the cave and shoved the pine bow back into place. He could hear the shouting. His only chance was to run.
He ran as fast as he could, trying to keep the pine between him and the searchlight. He heard the sound of snowmobiles. He tried to run faster. He couldn’t. He could hear running feet and then they were on him. They could have killed him if they wanted to. He didn’t force the issue, but fought them hand-to-hand, not bothering with the knife. He could have killed any one or two of them, maybe even three, but there were so many.
They were human men and pawns in the machine, so he killed none. He broke bones and inflicted pain. Eventually they swarmed him, his face in the snow and all their weight on his back. The world spun and bright lights lit and things went black, but not for long enough. They patted him down and emptied pockets of knives and gun and everything else. Then they stepped back. The snow felt like a feather bed.
The South African stepped forward, the only one of the troops not in a snowmobile suit, but in camouflage. He wore his K-bar upside down in a wrist sheath, and wore no side arm outside his anorak. His coat was unzipped and his right glove was off before he stopped.
He was a lean Afrikaner, six feet, one-seventy maybe. Age mid-thirties. He had what looked like Heidelberg scars on the left side of his face, and a nasty puckered one next to his right eye. His smile showed TV teeth.
“Stand him up!” he ordered. Too many of them came forward, getting in each other’s way. Eventually he stood with a circle of guards around. The South African walked toward him and the circle opened, closing again as the man walked behind him and kicked him behind the knees, knocking him into the snow.
He lay in the snow knowing what was coming. He’d been kicked harder before, but it had been a long time. The man’s accuracy was good.
The first one took him in the left kidney as the man said, “This is for Hero.”
The man walked around to the right side and delivered an even harder kick to his right kidney saying, “This is for Seije. This is only the start. Listen very carefully. My name is Kurt Van de Kaap. I want you to know the name of your executioner. When she gets done with you, I’ll finish the job. Stand up.”
Jack stood, not having to act like it was an effort, coughing more red into the snow. The man threw a set of handcuffs at his feet.
“Put them on. Correctly.”
Jack nearly fell when he stooped to put pick up the cuffs. It had been years since he had been handcuffed. Of course he had enjoyed it the last time. Kurt told his men to search him again. He smelled their hatred. He felt their fear.
Why shouldn’t they be afraid? They’d shot him off a mountain days ago. He survived the fall, ambushed and killed two armed men while armed only with a knife. He disappeared. He reappeared too sick to stand, but still sent three of them to the hospital with his bare hands. And what stories had they told each other over and over until they became legend?
Kurt barked an order and the men surged forward. One of them shoved him toward the snowmobile towing a sled. He shuffled forward, leg irons they’d put on him at the end of the second search catching in the snow.
Too many hands tumbled him into the sled, cracked ribs hitting the edge. The green canvas tarp they threw over him smelled of linseed oil and manure. The urge to sleep was overwhelming. The bouncing ride of the sled improperly yoked to the snowmobile ground his cracked ribs. Still, it was the first time he had laid down in so many hours.
They led Jack into the largest of the four bunkhouses, pushed him through a door on the left and then another door that lead to a locker room. The three-sided shower enclosure had two nozzles on each side. He was ready for the push and didn’t quite fall. Kurt threw him keys to the handcuffs. Jack unlocked the cuffs and threw the cuffs and keys back to the South African who then threw the keys to the leg irons. He repeated the process. An H & K appeared in the man’s hand.
“Bathe,” he said.
Jack bathed. The shower caddie contained body soap, an astringent, an antibacterial soap, a sappy sweet vitamin E lotion, an anti-fungal shampoo, and a cream rinse with the same sickly, sweet smell. When he passed on some of the products, Van de Kaap stopped him.
“Use all the products. She must not be exposed to infection.”
Jack asked, “Are you going to be able to wait until you’re back in your bunk to jerk off after watching me shower, or are you going to do it now, you fucking punk?”
A few seconds later, Jack picked himself up from off the wet tile. He now knew that Van de Kaap could kick well with either leg, but much preferred his right. Van de Kaap tossed him a one-piece coverall just as a radio squawked at the man’s waist. Van de Kaap listened for a moment and then said, “I don’t think it is good use of limited resources to… Hello? Hello? Fucking Bitch!”
The steaming heat spun the room. A thrumming sound overlaid the other noises. He reached back to steady himself on the wall. The woman who walked into the room was younger than he was. Many doctors were now. Her long, lean frame and stern face belied her gentle manner.
He said, “I will pay you one million dollars for effective medical care.”
The woman glanced briefly at Jack, turned to Kurt and said with a South African accent, “You should have called me sooner. Nurses. In here now!”
The doctor led him through the fire door at the end of the locker room and down the hall into a four-bed infirmary. He almost made it to the exam table before he slid unconscious to the floor.