Dominion (21 page)

“That’s the best I can do.” Lucia inserted an audio plug into her ear, then tapped at her palmtop. She frowned, tapped again. Frowned, tapped again. Ruppert felt sweat all over his body. His eyes twitched back and forth between the phone and the road.

“Okay,” she said. “Let it go.”

Ruppert released the latch. Lucia tapped at her computer again. Ruppert waited forever for her to speak.

“This is the courier,” she said. “I have the package, but—no, I’m calling from an emergency box. I know, so keep it quick. We’ve got a roadblock across our path—no, up ahead—no, they haven’t spotted us as far as I know, but—look, I just need an alternate route.” Lucia quickly described where they were, then paused for a painfully long time, listening. “But there must be something. I’d rather backtrack a hundred miles rather than—well, tell me quick, then.” There was another long, tense pause, during which Lucia stared at Ruppert with wide eyes.

“What’s going on?” he whispered, and she gave him an exaggerated shrug.

“Oh,” she said. “Is that—no, it’ll work, it just seems a little—okay, how long will that take?”

Ruppert saw very bright headlights around the next bend, approaching from the direction of the roadblock. Blue lights flashed through the trees.

“Lucia—” he said, but she waved him off.

The headlights brightened. It sounded like multiple cars approaching, and the lead one was turning the corner ahead. They were about to be spotted.

Ruppert grabbed Lucia around the waist and pulled her into the shadows. They stumbled for several feet, then lost their footing and rolled down a steep hill littered with sharp rocks, crashing through brambles along the way, finally coming to rest against the broad trunk of an old redwood.

“What the hell, Daniel?” she snapped, trying to disentangle her arms and legs from him. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pointed.

Up the hill, blue lights pulsed from the area where they’d been standing, sweeping out like sheet lightning through the trees and brush above them. He heard crackling voices from multiple radio channels.

“Right here,” a man’s voice said. “Yeah, someone’s been monkeying around back here. We must have just missed them. Their console’s still attached.” The man paused. “No, sir, we haven’t found a vehicle yet. I’ll have some men—yes, sir. We’re going to need more men for a foot search. I’ll radio—thank you, sir.” There was a brief pause, then the unseen police officer began belting orders.

Search beams flared, filling long swaths of the woods with daylight. Ruppert and Lucia crept around behind the redwood, flat on their stomachs, just as one of the beams flashed onto the tree’s wide trunk. There was blinding light on either side of them, but they were hidden for the moment.

“We should have taken my computer,” she whispered. “If they can trace where I called, then the whole deal is blown. Wow. That was stupid.”

“We should get moving,” Ruppert whispered. Already he could hear boots crunching through leaves as they descended the slope towards them.

They crawled along the ground, moving straight downhill from the redwood, the only direction along which they had any hoping of concealing themselves. Narrow shafts of light streaked across the woods ahead of them, either flashlights or gun lights.

Ruppert’s hand reached ahead into empty space, and he toppled forward. Lucia grabbed onto him, which slowed his fall but did not break it. They went over the edge of what he first thought was a ditch, until they slid down a muddy bank and splashed into frigid, running water, deep enough that Ruppert’s shoes only brushed against the pebbled bottom. They’d fallen into a creek.

Ruppert grabbed onto exposed tree roots to keep himself from drifting away, though he wondered if drifting might not be the best option. Lucia clung to the bank a few yards downstream, and she was looking at him with wide eyes, pressing one finger to her lips.

“Watch your step there,” a man’s voice spoke directly above them. Ruppert heard several branches snapping, and a clump of loose earth tumbled from overhead, between Ruppert and Lucia, and into the creek.

The narrow beams played along the surface of the water, dangerously close to them. The police were about ten feet over their heads, and only the darkness of the waning night and the shadows of the forest protected them.

Then a sound like a clap of thunder boomed in the distance, echoing down all the ridges and canyons of the mountains around them.

“The hell was that?” one of the cops asked. They muttered among themselves.

The crackling crosstalk of the police radios ended, replaced by a single commanding female voice. “All units, all units, we have a possible T1 on Diablo Mountain,” she said. “Repeat, Diablo Mountain, possible T1. All units respond.”

“What happened?” Ruppert began to climb the muddy slope.
“They set off a bomb somewhere to break up the roadblock,” she said. “Terrorism takes priority.”

“That was nice of them.” They hurried up along the steep hillside.

“It’s a lot of trouble,” Lucia said. “And it could draw federal attention. Everyone’s going to hate me. I just hope no one gets caught.”

They climbed back up to the emergency phone box, but Lucia’s computer had been severed and confiscated. They hiked back up along the road, keeping to the trees so they could jump out of the way at a moment’s notice. They found the car intact and undisturbed. The police probably hadn’t had time to find it, and it was not very visible from the road. Ruppert looked ahead, where the edge of flashing blue light had disappeared.

“Let’s go,” Lucia said. “We’re as safe as we’ll ever be.”

They drove for thirty minutes among winding roads, eventually turning off on an unmarked, unlined street that became a dirt track. Lucia stopped in front of an overgrown brick gate thick with vines. She stepped out of the car and approached the gate, where she pressed a button set into an ornate frame.

“We’re here,” she said. “If anybody’s listening.”

After several seconds, the gates creaked open, folded inward and squealing with the sound of badly rusted machinery.

They drove through overgrown fields of wild vines and thorny brambles. At one intersection of dirt tracks, a young dreadlocked black man stood with his hand raised. Lucia stopped, and he climbed into the back seat.

“Turn left,” he said. “We’re stashing the car in the old fermentation building.”

At his directions, Lucia drove them into a long brick building with boarded windows. They parked among machinery draped in tarps, then got out, swept the tarp from one of the machines, and covered up Ruppert’s car.

“Is everything all right?” Lucia asked.

“It’s all right,” the man said. “We just had to distract the police force of Sonoma County and get it away with it. Did I mention we had no time to prepare?”

“I’m sorry,” Lucia said.

“Don’t ever, ever do that again. Now we have to deal with Hartwell sniffing around. Through here.” The young man approached one of four giant cylinders against a long wall. He took hold of the circular pressure gauge, which was as wide as the man himself, and wrenched it around like a large dial. A section of the metal cylinder screeched as it opened outward, revealing brick stairs that spiraled away underground. He led them down, closing the hatch after them.

“What is this place?” Ruppert asked as they stepped into an underground room made of brick and stone. Racks of dusty glass containers lined the walls, under rows of grow lamps with empty sockets.

“Somebody used to have another operation going on down here, back in the 1970s, 1980s,” the young man said. “Plants more profitable than grapes. You should wait here.” He left through a faux-medieval door made of thick wooden slats and brass bindings.

“Friendly people,” Ruppert said.

“They’re cleaning up
our
mess,” Lucia said.

“You don’t think they hurt anybody?”

“I’m sure they just detonated an old building or something. Already wired in advance. They do have contingency plans.”

“An old wooden water tower, actually.” A familiar face entered along with the young black man. It was the “Packers fan” Ruppert had met at Nixon Stadium. “No water was injured, I promise.”

“Archer, I’m glad you made it,” Lucia said.

“Your name’s Archer?” Ruppert said. “I thought it was Benny.”

“Benny’s what I go by when I’m out among the sheeple,” Archer said. “And Archer’s what I’m going by this year. And this is Turin.” Archer clapped the dreadlocked man’s shoulder. “Because he’s a miracle worker. Every call box for eighty miles—pow!”

Turin nodded at Adam. To Archer, he said, “Big lady thinks we should go ahead now, since he’s here. They’ll keep watch for the Harty boys.”

“Great,” Archer said. “Daniel, background. We’ve got him thinking that we’re doing it for him—like a final request before the cancer eats him up. He thinks you’re still with GlobeNet, and this is going to go large onscreen. The story he believes beyond that, too complicated, you don’t need to know. Can you play along with that?”

“Not a problem,” Ruppert said.

“Should I come?” Lucia asked.

“You’d better,” Turin said. “You go upstairs, she might rip out your throat for the storm you just stirred up. And we don’t need her distracted right now. Anyway, the man hasn’t seen you before, so we’re calling you the GlobeNet camera operator.”

“I don’t have any equipment.”

Archer handed her a tall silver cylinder with a 360-degree lens band.

“And you,” Turin said to Ruppert. “You need to look like you’re on the job. I’ll find you a suit upstairs, but maybe…” He pantomimed a few swipes at his own face.

Ruppert touched the heavy stubble on his chin, then nodded.

“Bathroom’s down the hall, fourth door on your left,” Turin said.

A few minutes later, having shaved his face and splashed some water in his hair, dressed in a dark brown wool suit that might have been fashionable in the 1920s, Ruppert met back with the others. Lucia had gathered her hair back into a ponytail and changed into a long-sleeved blouse and ankle-length skirt, the way a modern Dominionist woman dressed in the workplace, but they looked ridiculous on her.

“Okay, Daniel.” Lucia powered up the holographic recorder. “Let’s go and make your life worthwhile.”

Turin led them through a dark warren of rooms lit by a few spare bulbs, down another set of stairs, then unlocked a sheet-metal door. “Don’t let him rattle you,” he said to Ruppert. “And try not to mind the stink. He won’t sponge himself off, so we just have to hose him down every couple of days.”

The door swung open, and Ruppert stepped into a cinderblock room dominated by a large iron cage, like a monkey house at an old city zoo. A man reclined on a heap of filthy cushions, his leg attached to one of the cage bars by a long chain. His hair was longer, grayer, and more scraggly, and he smelled like a rhinoceros, but Ruppert recognized the swastika tattoos on his flabby arms and bare torso. The man leaned forward and smiled at him through teeth clotted with dried, black blood.

This was Hollis Westerly.

TWENTY-ONE

The underground room was floored with a concrete slab, but a few worn rugs and swatches of carpet softened the interior of Westerly’s cage. Scattered inside the cage were a small chemical toilet, a few bottles of water, a cot, and a few highly illegal magazines of the kind that featured people performing sex acts. Westerly rose from the pile of cushions at the middle of the cage and approached Ruppert, his chain skittering along the floor behind him.

His smile was crooked, missing teeth.

“I know you,” he said. “I seen your show before.”

“Always nice to meet a fan,” Ruppert said.

“Didn’t say I was a fan or not.” Westerly looked at Turin. “Now give me one.”

“That’ll be three today, Hollis,” Turin said.

“You said I could have one when he got here.”

Turin shrugged, then produced a crumpled pack of Chesterfield cigarettes. He passed one of them to Westerly through the bars and lit it for him.

Westerly took a deep pull, then hacked loudly. It sounded like gravel being ground to dust inside his chest. He looked back at Westerly with watering eyes.

“They got a colored boy deciding when I smoke, when I eat, when my shitter gets emptied,” Westerly said. “How do you like that?”

“It must be difficult for you,” Ruppert said. The muscles in his arms and fingers twitched as if they had a mind of their own. He wondered if some part of him was still programmed to murder Westerly, despite Smith’s efforts.

“Difficult, hell,” Westerly said, then coughed again. Blood spattered out from his lips. His eyes drifted to Lucia, who was setting up the cylindrical silver holorecorder on a tripod a few feet outside the cage wall. He took a long, slow look up and down her body. “Whose ‘at?”

“Oh,” Ruppert said. “This is, uh, Karen. Karen Andrews…son…Anderson. My camera tech.”

Westerly continued to leer at her. “She don’t look like no Karen Andrewston to me. She looks more like a Maria Gonzales. That your name, Maria Gonzales?”

Lucia ignored him and spoke to Archer, staying in character: “Can we get any more light in here?”