Outrage (20 page)

Harmon drove a two-year-old black Mercedes ML550, a fast, powerful truck rigged out for desert travel; it had a big orange spot hand-painted on the roof, the better to help the search planes should he need to be rescued from one desert hellhole or another.

He was driving fast south on I-280 through Daly City when one of his subordinates, a former combat medic named Eric Jobair, called and told him that the “eco-goofs” had hit a secret Singular building in Stockton.

“I thought I knew them all, but I never heard that we had a place over there,” Jobair said. “Anyway, it was totally empty when they hit, except for a couple of Thorne's security people. They caught one of the goofs. Some kid.”

Harmon started looking for an off-ramp. “Where'd you hear this?”

“Andy Johnson.”

“Don't know him.”

“One of Thorne's guys, I ran into him coming out of the building. He's an old pal, we used to shoot some hoops over in the 'stan.”

“You say the building was empty?”

“Yeah. I guess the goofs ran a dump truck into it, set it on fire, called the cops and the fire department and the media….Guess they thought it was a lab, and they'd get some publicity payoff.”

“Know where they're taking the kid?”

“Didn't ask,” Jobair said. “Don't think I'd want to be in his sneakers, though.”

An off-ramp was coming up, Serramonte Boulevard, and Harmon took it, beat the light at the top, went left, and slid into the turn lane that would take him onto the highway back the way he'd come.

Harmon had gone quiet, and after a moment, Jobair asked, “You still there?”

“Yeah. Listen, man, we've got a problem here,” Harmon said. “I don't have time to fill you in. Don't tell anyone that you called me, okay? And don't call me again. At all. You'll know why in a day or two.”

“What's the big mystery, boss?”

“You'll know in a day or two,” Harmon said again. “For now, lie low, and keep your mouth shut. There's some weird shit about to go down.”

Harmon had been on his way to Singular for a midnight check on what he called “sources and resources.” Now he looked for the California Highway Patrol as he stood on the accelerator and the Benz blew through a hundred miles an hour. Harmon kept an apartment in a quiet building near the Lone Mountain campus of the University of San Francisco. Not the easiest place to get to in a hurry, but he liked the ambience of the area.

He had to slow down as he came up to Highway 1, and made a decision. He took a cell phone out of a lower pocket of the cargo pants he was wearing and pushed a button. A moment later, a man said, “Hello?”

Harmon: “Is this the hotel guy?”

“You bastard!” Twist screamed into the satphone.

“I know, it was a trap. Wasn't aimed at you so much as me. You were the bonus.”

“What?”

“They knew they had a leak after Las Vegas,” Harmon said. “They set me up, and probably a couple other guys. They leaked different locations to us to see where you'd show up. You went to Stockton—that's the location they leaked to me. I knew it was too easy. I knew there was something wrong, but that's water under the bridge, and we gotta deal with what we got. Listen: they got one of your guys.”

“We know that,” Twist said. “He's just a kid, a runaway. He doesn't know what's going on.”

“Makes no difference. They're gonna squeeze him, and then, I suspect, they'll get rid of him.”

“Where would they take him? Which direction will they head?”

“No idea.”

“You gotta help us,” Twist pleaded.

“I gotta help myself,” Harmon said. “They're gonna kill me, too, if they catch me. How long ago did you hit this place?”

“Half hour, maybe…”

“Good. I got a little time.”

Harmon could hear a garbled exchange on the other end, and then a girl's voice came on the line. “We need to meet.”

“I don't know if I can,” Harmon said. “If you call back in an hour and I answer, I'm still alive and rolling. We can talk then. In the meantime, the guy who ran this op is probably on the way to Stockton with half his people, so if you're still close, get out of there.”

“Not that I trust you,” Shay said, “but where's the other half going?”

“My place,” Harmon said, and he clicked off.

He didn't want to get trapped in his own parking garage, so he left the truck on the street, a block away, and jogged to his apartment, slowed when he got close, and checked it out. No sign of anything unusual.

He had two separate and distinct pressures: to move fast, because they'd be coming, and to go slow, because they might already be there. But he needed his stuff. He checked around as well as he could in three or four minutes, then went in.

Nobody waiting. He lived on the top floor, the third, and took the interior stairs. The door was locked at the bottom, and it didn't appear to have been messed with. Still, he slipped the pistol out of a smooth chamois holster that he hid at the small of his back, and ran up the stairs.

Nobody in the hall.

A few seconds later, he was inside his apartment.

Weapons.

He'd built a carefully concealed cache at the back of a bedroom closet. He pulled all the clothes out and tossed them on his bed, then yanked the hanger rod out of its mounting and dropped it on the floor. The cache cover was a piece of white plywood that looked like the back wall of the closet, but wasn't. He pulled it loose. Behind it were two identical black pistols, Berettas, a combat shotgun, and an M16 with a bunch of banana clips. The shotgun was legal, but the rifle wasn't. The long guns went into an electric guitar case that had had the guts ripped out. The pistols and a dozen boxes of ammo went into a big Arc'teryx Altra backpack. His combat gear also went into the pack: boots and a Kevlar helmet of the kind issued to Delta Company operators. A bulletproof vest went on the floor.

His combat gear weighed close to a hundred pounds, as much as he could carry in a hurry. He hustled it down to the truck, locked it up, and headed back up to the apartment, keeping a Beretta in his jacket pocket with four full magazines.

Looked at his watch; if the goofs were telling the truth, it'd been fifty minutes since the Stockton building was hit. Thorne's troops were an hour's drive away, and it would have taken them a few minutes to get organized after they were called. But an hour was as much as he could risk: he had ten more minutes.

He'd seen nobody on the street except some college kids and a dog walker. He ran back up the stairs, pulled down a rolling suitcase and a big aluminum briefcase. He stuffed the suitcase with clothes, and the briefcase with necessary paperwork—insurance policies, tax returns, truck title, passport. That done, he went to his desk, yanked the bottom drawer out, and felt around the back housing until he found the envelope. Twenty-five thousand in small bills. He put it in the briefcase and was about to snap it shut when he spied his rock collection on a bookshelf. He stepped over, grabbed four or five stones, tossed them on the money, and closed the case.

Looked around. The apartment looked like he'd left in a hurry. Maybe he could come back? Maybe someday? Rent was paid for three more months….Checked his watch: two minutes before his self-imposed deadline. He took the two minutes to put the cache back together and the rod back up and to rehang his clothes.

He was nearly finished when the doorbell rang. He tensed. He took the pistol out and edged up to the door, staying well to the side, and called, “Who's there?”

“Who do you think, asshole?”

Sync.

“You alone?” Harmon asked.

“Right now, I am. Won't be for long. Cartwell knows, too. He'll be sending Thorne's security people.”

“You got a gun?”

“Yeah, but I'm not going to shoot you.”

Harmon thought about it. Said, “Wait one.”

He went into the bedroom, got the bulletproof vest from the floor, pulled it on, zipped it. Back at the door, he undid the dead bolt and backed away, the Beretta in his hand. “Door's open.”

Sync came in. He was wearing a British-made suit, cut not to show the shoulder holster beneath it. He said, “You dumb-ass. How long were you talking to them?”

“A couple of times in the last week, that's all,” Harmon said. “I didn't want anyone else killed.”

Sync stepped inside the apartment and pushed the door shut. He looked around, saw open filing cabinets. “When did you figure it out?”

“I heard a rumor that the Stockton building was empty and knew I'd been punked. With Cartwell all swole up with testosterone and Thorne with all those gunnies, I thought I'd better get out of sight.”

“You're right about that,” Sync said.

“So, did they send you up here to bring me out?” Harmon asked.

“No. They don't know I'm here,” Sync said. “I came to warn you.”

“Really.” Harmon let the skepticism show.

“Yeah, really. You saved my ass in the 'stan, when my ass was gone,” Sync said. “Now I'm saving yours. You've got to get out, get far away, because you know too much. You can keep your mouth shut, but Cartwell won't trust that. He'll want your head. You keep your mouth shut long enough, maybe he'll let it go.”

“How about you?”

“We're even now, so if I see you again, I will take you down.”

“Ah, man…”

Sync shook his head and asked, “What happened, Harmon? How'd it get to this? You were one of our top guys. You had a chance to live forever….”

“If you believe that, you're dumber than I ever thought you were,” Harmon said. “That treatment—
if
they can get it to work—is for billionaires, not grunts like us. When the time comes, they'll put you on the table, saying you'll wake up as a twenty-year-old, give you a shot, and walk away laughing about it. Look at these people, Sync. They're murdering children to get what they want, and they can never let anybody know. You think there'll be any loose ends? Cartwell might scrape in, but not you.”

“That's bullshit. We would have gotten in. I'll still get in.”

“I don't believe it,” Harmon said. “And I don't want it, not if it means killing children so rich people and dirty politicians can have their bodies. Nope. I won't do that.”

After a moment of silence, Sync said, “You know more about the details than I thought.”

“I'm an intel operator,” Harmon said. “One thing I can't figure out, though, is how they roped you into it. You think buying new lives for billionaires is the American way now? What happened to
you
?”

Sync shook his head. “I'm sorry. It would have been good to sit down and work this out between us, but you don't have the time. Neither do I.”

Harmon said, “West.”

“What?”

“West was a good guy—as good as anybody you ever worked with,” Harmon said. “Thorne murdered him. How could you support that? He was one of your own troops.”

“He was a traitor,” Sync said, ice in his tone.

“Traitor? What does that make you? A patriot? A patriot for a company of billionaires who murder children? Jesus, man.”

“I'm going,” Sync said again.

Harmon gave the apartment a last glance, and then, briefcase and luggage in hand, he went out the door after Sync, locking the dead bolt with the extra-strength strike plate behind it.

They took the rear fire stairs down, Sync in front, out of simple gun etiquette: Sync knew that Harmon wouldn't shoot him, but Harmon didn't know that about Sync, not for sure. They emerged from the stairwell at the side of the apartment building, out on green grass, edging an adjoining parking lot, on a nice California night.

“I'll head out first,” Sync said as an orange tomcat, something limp in its mouth, ran past. “I wish to God this hadn't happened.”

“You set me up.”

“I hoped it was one of the other guys,” Sync said.

“Well: good job, technically speaking.”

Sync flashed a grin and held out a hand, and Harmon shook it. Sync said, “We're even. Remember that.”

“I'll remember. If Cartwell sends somebody after me, make it not you.”

Sync nodded and Harmon said:

“Take care, Stephen.”

Harmon jogged to his truck, loaded up the last two bags, and climbed inside.

He was back at war.

He smiled as he put the Mercedes in gear. Didn't feel that bad.

Sync got on his phone and called Thorne. “I heard about Stockton, and that you got one of the kids.”

“Yeah. Some punk named Cade Holt. Hadn't had that name.”

“Where are you now?”

“Still in Sacramento. It was Stockton, so your guy—”

“Yeah, Harmon, that sonofabitch,” Sync said. “You better get some guys moving. He knows how to run.”

“They'll be at his place in five minutes,” Thorne said. “I'm waiting for the call.”

“Whatever you do, it's got to be quick and quiet. You don't want to take him on face to face, or he'll light up the whole neighborhood.”

“We got a sniper,” Thorne said. “It's all fixed.”

“Call me when it's done,” Sync said.

Thorne hung up and went back to Cade Holt. One of the kid's eyes was swollen closed, and his lips had been slashed open by his own teeth. His hands were cuffed behind his back; he was leaning in a corner, the wall holding him up.

Thorne grabbed his chin, dug his nails into Cade's face. “We're gonna need some information from you,” he said. “Two ways we can get that: the easy way, and the hard way. You take the easy way, and maybe we can talk about what happens next. You take the hard way, we'll get the information anyway, and you'll wind up in a shallow grave out in the woods.”