Outrage (27 page)

“We think Fenfang's gone,” Twist said. “She had a bullet wound right over her heart.”

Danny staggered away, pulling on the dreads at the sides of his head in grief.

Twist called after him, “Cade called the cops, told them about the shooting and the prisoners.”

Danny turned back, looking down the freeway. “Where are they, then? I never saw a single cop car coming here.”

“Maybe there's a faster way from wherever they're at,” Cruz said. “We gotta get back there. We gotta help Shay.”

Danny: “Nobody ever saw our vehicles. One of us…or all of us…could drive past there, see what's going on.”

“Let's do it,” Twist said. And to all three: “I told the nurse to X-ray Fenfang's head. We should call them now, and tell them that she was executed by the same people who used her like a laboratory animal. The same ones who were holding those poor people on the ship.”

Odin lifted his head. “Put that out on Mindkill. Some people will see it. Get Cade to bring it back up, put it out there. Make it impossible for them to get at her…make it impossible for somebody from Singular to claim her body and hide it. Put her movie out there, the interview.”

“We can do that,” Twist said. He looked around at everybody. “I can't believe this. I can't believe this happened.”

“If the cops moved fast, they'll get them all,” Cruz said. “Let's go, I want to see it.”

They piled into the cars and drove back to the freeway, retracing their route to the ship.

Twist led with Odin, followed by Cruz in the truck and Danny in the Volvo. As they got closer, Odin said to Twist, “Shouldn't there be more lights?”

“I don't know. I don't know what's happening,” Twist said. Danny, on the phone, said, “Don't slow down when we go by. Keep it moving.”

They passed the turnoff where they'd parked the cars, and then they were at the open concrete pad where the RVs and SUVs had come in.

And they saw a single cop car, with flashing lights on the roof, and a cop walking back to it. He got in the car and killed the flashers.

Behind him, the pad was empty. No RVs, no SUVs.

And the ship…

The ship was gone.

Deep in the hull of the ship, toward the bow, in a niche made by three supporting beams, Shay and Harmon crouched in the dark. The ship was moving: not quickly, but steadily, the engine turning with a powerful hum. Above them, in a den-like cove where the two sides of the ship joined to make the point of the bow, X lay quietly, watching the space behind them.

So far, there'd been no lights, no search parties.

“Wonder where they're running to?” Harmon said. He had been digging in his backpack and now came up with an LED flashlight. He turned it on, twisted an adjustment ring, which dimmed the light to a thin glow. He took the rifle off his shoulder for the first time, pulled the magazine, checked it in the light, slapped it back in place.

Getting ready for combat,
Shay thought.
But there were so many of them….

“Once they've got the test subjects all corralled, they'll probably do an inch-by-inch search of the ship,” Harmon said. “Did you see how many of them there were?”

“No, but there were three big RVs for the prisoners, got to figure three or four guys each, that'd be, maybe, twelve? And four SUVs with two guys each, that'd be eight more. So maybe…twenty?”

“Twenty is about eighteen too many, plus they'll cut Butch and Jim loose….”

Shay was quiet for a minute. “One good thing.”

Harmon: “Tell me.”

“We got 'em cornered.”

After a few seconds, Harmon started to laugh.

Harmon slowed and grabbed Shay's shirt. “Getting close to the street. We need to call Twist again.”

“Not yet,” Shay whispered. “Somebody's coming behind us.”

Harmon turned, listened, then pushed her shoulder down. “Lie flat. It's one of the guys from the ship.”

They froze in place, beneath a boat, with an axle between them and the approaching man. He'd chosen the same route they'd taken, for the same reasons: it was open enough to move quickly, and yet still provided cover.

The man came on and, just as he got to the boat, dropped into a crouch, looking ahead…and then his eyes turned toward them.

Harmon said, “Freddy, I'm pointing a pistol at your head.”

“Goddammit, Harmon, that was you, wasn't it? Back on the ship.”

“Yeah. Where're you going?”

“A long way from here. I'm done; so are some of the other guys. Ginsburg and me are hooking up and heading for Mexico, and then maybe further south. Maybe go to Africa. There're some jobs there.”

“How'd that happen?”

“The ass is falling off the company,” Freddy said. “And we've all been talking about you. When we signed up, we didn't know what we were getting into. But there's some bad shit going on and Thorne's lying to us. It ain't legal—no way.”

“No way,” Harmon agreed. “You got a ride out of here?”

“No, we're running. Man, I walked through Baghdad in the dark, right in the middle of the war, so I won't get caught here…if you let me go.”

“You got a gun with you?”

“A nine.”

“Keep it in your pocket. You try to ambush us further up the line…well, we got the dog with us, he can see in the dark, and he'll tear your face off. I'm telling you, Freddy, he'll kill you.”

“I'm not messing with you anymore. I'm out of it.”

“Go, then,” Harmon said.

Freddy started to move away, but then stopped and said, quietly, “I appreciate this, letting me go. So I'll give you something. There's another Singular base that you guys don't know about. It's in the desert, a little less than two hours by private jet, southeast of San Francisco. Mostly south. Might've been Arizona, or New Mexico? There's a good private landing strip, but not much else, wherever it was. I flew it four times as security, and to pass out drinks and keep an eye on the passengers. The passengers going down were normal, but coming back up, most of them had had some kind of surgery done on their heads.”

Shay asked, “Old people? Rich people?”

Freddy said, “Didn't see you back there. You the chick who shot Thorne?”

“Yes.”

Freddy chuckled. “He is
really
pissed. You won't want to spend any time with him, you know, in private.”

“I wasn't planning to,” Shay said. “So, old people? Rich people?”

“Yeah, I'd say so. Wrinkles and bling.”

“Who were the pilots?” Harmon asked.

“Two guys named Walt and Barry. No last names. Got a feeling they flew for the agency at some point. Hey—gotta go. You guys take care. And, honey—stay away from Thorne.”

Freddy faded into the dark.

They gave him a minute; then Shay pulled her own gun and said, “I got this. Follow me.”

Excerpt from
Rampage
copyright © 2015 by John Sandford and Michele Cook. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.