Paradise Falls (44 page)

“Hold on.”

She peered over the seat as he threw the switch and stabbed a button with his finger. Behind her, the engine roared to life with a guttural, animal snarl so loud it vibrated through her back. The microphone in the helmet was a necessity now. Jacob ran through a series of switches, looking at the gauges in front of him.

“Everything looks good. Main board is green. You ready.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jennifer. “We can’t take this thing on the road. We won’t make it to the stop sign before they call the National Guard.”

Jacob looked back over his shoulder.

“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Jennifer eyed him.

“I’ve always wanted to say that.”

Jennifer tightened the safety harness and gripped her legs, clenching her teeth. Jacob pulled the yoke all the way back and pulled the gears selector into the forward drive position, let off the brake grip on the yoke and pushed the throttle forward. The Martyr rolled forward, slowly. Jennifer couldn’t hear it, but she could feel rhythmic thumps from the rear tread pounding the floor of the carriage house. The other cars rocked on their suspensions. Even the Aston Martin swayed back and forth as they passed.

Jacob rolled the vehicle outside and swung around, facing away from the house and the road that twisted down the hillside. Jennifer swallowed as he pushed the throttle forward a little more and the vehicle sped up from walking speed to a brisk jog. She watched the tree he carved pass by, as the vehicle nosed down the slope of the hill. The tilt made her lean back, until she was pressed into the seat. Jacob was grinning.

“Okay. Let’s see what she can do.”

“Um,” said Jennifer.
 

The ground leveled out. Jacob pushed back in the seat as he shoved the throttle forward, about halfway. The engine snarled and the seat rammed into Jennifer’s back as the vehicle plowed forward, weaving between trees as Jacob tilted the yoke this way and that, his grin widening. Jennifer fought the urge to close her eyes as the trees swept by. She wasn’t sure what would happen if he hit one, but she didn’t want to find out. Finally, the ground leveled out and Jacob swerved out on a dirt track that ran behind the hill, along a corn field.

He pushed the throttle further forward, and the corn swept by so fast Jennifer couldn’t bear to look at it. Jacob glanced back at her, still grinning.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yes. We’ll be there soon. We’re taking a more direct route.”

There was a whole network of these dirt tracks and open spaces. Jacob slowed down when trees appeared, sped up again on dirt roads. For about half the trip, they rode next to the river. It was raging from all the rain, frothing white over the rocks as it sped towards the falls.
 

“I think you should slow down.”

Jacob eased the throttle forward, and sped up. Jennifer scowled.

Finally, he pulled back, easing down the speed and braking with the control on the yoke until the vehicle rolled to a gradual stop.

“Where the hell are we?” said Jennifer.

“About a quarter mile from the address Ellison gave us. Any closer and they’ll hear us. Let’s move.”

The top of the Martyr slid open and Jacob climbed out, leaving his helmet behind. Jennifer dropped down beside him, and checked her gear. She had two pistols, one either hip, and some other odds and ends that Jacob gave her, in pouches on her belt and vest. One of them held patches of cloth that contained a chemical clotting agent. Jennifer insisted on that after last time.

“This is just an observation mission,” said Jacob.

He took her by the belt and clipped something to her waist. It looked like a radio handset.

“What’s that?”

“Friend-or-foe transponder. We probably won’t need it.”

Jennifer eyed him. “What does that do?”

“If you have this on, the Martyr’s automated…”

Her eyes narrowed.

“It’s so it won’t shoot us.”

“It shoots things
by itself?”

“Seriously. Come on. Stay low and stay quiet.”

Every once in a while, Jacob stopped to check the GPS unit on the back of his arm. Jennifer crouched next to him, listening. It was getting darker out and there were lights on in the distance, and she could hear the sound of voices carried on the wind even if she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Jacob looked at her and touched his lips for silence, and moved forward along a low track through the scrub brush, next to the old hedge that lined the edge of a farm. The field was lying fallow, throwing up a rich earthy smell.

Jacob stopped and Jennifer crouched beside his shoulder.

The machine shop was like dozens, hundreds of other buildings in rural Pennsylvania, located out in the middle of nowhere for no readily apparently reason, and visibly abandoned. Four long blue trucks sat side by side, marked on the sides in sweeping yellow letters, Cerulean Transport. Parked on the far side of the lot, a dozen cars waited, of all makes and models, some old, some new. Loitering around was a clutch of Leviathans in their leathers, Paradise Falls police, and the men driving the trucks. Their uniforms matched the color of the trucks, and they had hats pulled down to hide their faces with the brims.

Jacob drew a tiny camera and telephoto lens from his belt and assembled them, and began snapping pictures, though the camera made no sound when he tapped the button. He swung the camera around and took maybe a dozen shots, then tapped her arm.

“Closer. Come on, stay low.”

Jennifer’s stomach coiled up, cold, as she followed him closer to the machine shop. The last time they snuck in somewhere, they ended up chased down the highway while Jacob was nearly bleeding to death. Jacob stopped her with a light touch on her wrist and started snapping more pictures. He got the license plates on the trap cars, she was sure. The old cars had to be what Ellison told them about before, in the gas station safehouse. Jennifer watched them lift up the back of a false trunk in an old hatchback and slip a box inside.

There had to be a ton of drugs. All four of the vans were full, and when one of the cars was filled up and pulled away, it wasn’t five minutes before another car pulled into the lot and replaced it.

“This is bigger than I thought,” Jacob whispered. “I need to get close to one of those vans. Wait here.”

“Jacob,” Jennifer hissed.

“Nothing fancy. In and out. They won’t even see me.”

Jennifer sighed and nodded. Jacob moved ahead, keeping low. She shifted around to watch him, her heart speeding up with every slow, silent step he took until he was in front of one of the trucks. He took something from his belt, lowered himself to the ground, and crawled under the truck. Jennifer moved a little closer, but stopped herself. She recognized some of the men standing around in the parking lot. One was Calvin Carlyle, Ellison’s father and the chief of police, though he was in civilian clothes. The other two she knew from her visit, with Jacob, to the crime scene where the kids were shot. They had to be the leaders of the Leviathans.

The taller one with the lanky brown hair stood to one side, leaning on the seafoam green Chrysler. The other older, heavier one with the thick gray beard was talking to Calvin Carlyle, visibly angry and animated, jabbing the air with his big thick fingers. Jennifer edged closer, trying to hear what he was saying. She froze when she heard a slight rustle in the grass, but it was only Jacob, crawling back to her on his hands and knees. He crouched next to her and glanced back at the van.

“I put a tracking unit on it, up under the front bumper. When they leave we’re going to see where they go.”

Jennifer nodded.

“We gotta get back to the car. Come on.”

Slowly, deliberately, they made their way along the ditches and gulleys, back to clump of trees where the Martyr lurked. There was something funny about the paint, like it didn’t catch any light from the setting sun. Jacob boosted Jennifer up and pulled himself in, and closed the cockpit. She shifted in her seat and leaned on the back of his, watching the screen in front of the yoke. Jacob flicked a hat switch under his thumb and the screen rotated through views, starting with a rear camera in the bright white and gray tones of an infrared camera, and finally to a map.

Jacob tapped the screen. “We’re here. The transceiver I put on the delivery truck is here.”

“What do we do now?”

“Wait for them to start moving.”

Jacob brought the engine to life, and Jennifer leaned back to put on her harness and helmet.

The screen in front of her flicked on.

“Jacob?”

“Weapons free,” said Jacob. “There’s a forward-looking infrared mounted on the turret. Aim for hotspots in the vehicles.”

“Jacob…”

“The van is moving. We gotta give it time.”

“Time for what? We can’t follow them in this thing, can we?”

“They’ll never see us coming. Trust me.”

He watched the dot moving on the map. Jennifer tensed, biting her lip. Jacob put the Martyr in gear and eased forward on the throttle.

“You know,” he said. “I have an urge.”

“What kind of urge?”

“See what this baby can do. We could take out those trap cars. They wouldn’t stand a chance against us in this. If I’d had this baby when we took those girls…” he sighed.

She touched his shoulder.

“If we go in there and smash everything up, we’ll never catch those vans.”

“You’re right. We need to see where they’re going.”

“Can we follow them in this thing? It’s not exactly subtle.”

Jacob pulled the gear selector all the way to the back. The engine went so quiet, Jennifer could barely hear it. She took off her helmet.

“What did you do?”

“Switched over to the electric drive. The main engine is running as a generator, so it’ll be virtually silent while we’re running this way.”

“Oh. Is there anything this thing can’t do?”

“It doesn’t make margaritas,” said Jacob.

Jennifer snickered to herself.

The dot on the screen was moving. Jennifer leaned on his seat back.

“Let’s go get them,” she said.

5.

The blue dot on Jacob’s screen stopped for all traffic controls, and drove five miles an hour under the speed limit. Jennifer sat behind him, arms folded over her chest, wriggling every time breathing against the tight ballistic vest irritated her. Jacob had the Martyr creeping forward through a field, barely going twenty-five miles an hour to avoid kicking up a trail of dust. It was really getting dark now, the sky a deep purple fading to black as the sun threw long shadows across the world. Jacob slowed even more as bright lights appeared in the distance as the Martyr crested a low rise.

Jennifer sat up, and Jacob eased the monstrous vehicle into a clutch of hedges and scrubby trees, and shut it down. The cockpit opened and he stood up in his seat, looking over at the lights with his tiny binoculars. The wind caught his hair and made him look like a painting of a general commanding a battlefield. He pulled on his mask, and Jennifer did the same, climbing out to drop down next to him. He checked his pouches, then reached over and checked hers. She knew she should probably be a little insulted by the way he checked her equipment, like she wasn’t competent to do it herself, but the mask covering his face only made the look in his blazing green eyes stand out even more.

“Come on.”

It was a long, long way to the lights. Jacob dropped into a crouch near the road, and Jennifer dropped down beside him.

The place was huge, and surrounded by temporary chain link fences, the posts held in place by sandbags rather than set in the ground. Cheap, utilitarian metal trailers surrounded a brightly lit work site. Lights appeared on the highway and a big rig came rumbling towards the front gate. It pulled a shipping container, the stackable kind carried by cargo ships. It stopped at the front gate and a man in a blue uniform ran out of the trailer, hopped up the side of the truck and checked a clipboard before stepping down to swing open the rickety gate and allow the truck to pass.

“We’re going in,” said Jacob.

Jennifer nodded, and followed him without protest. Her shock at her own bravado came after she was already moving. Again to her own surprise, she didn’t need to be told, either by word or signal, but followed Jacob to the best way in, a low gulley cut by a now-dry stream, dipping under the edge of one of the fences. She stopped just before he did, and looked around, checking all the corners, the edges of the buildings, looking for movement or signs of a security camera. Jacob gave her a look over his shoulder and nodded.

Jennifer went first, lying on her back, and slid under the fence. Jacob had at tighter time wriggling under but made it without shaking the fence and making a racket. His back was coated with mud, though. Jennifer supposed hers was, too.

“This way.”

Jacob cut towards a row of shipping containers. They sat on a dense layer of gravel. On the other side of the big open space, under the lights, workmen were running an asphalt machine. The sulfury stink filled the air as they coated the gravel with a thick layer of tar.

“This is permanent,” said Jacob. “They want to start stacking these containers. The ground here is too soft, so they have to pave.”

Jennifer nodded.

“Should we see what’s inside one?”

There were two rows, one set in front of the other. The first row faced the workmen and the trailer at the entrance, so Jacob cut around behind it and Jennifer followed. There were no cameras, so she stood up and followed him. After stopping to listen, Jacob waved his hand and chose a container at random. He pulled on the heavy latch and grunted, and clutched his shoulder.

“Here,” said Jennifer, softly.

She joined with him. He gripped the handle with his right hand and she put both hands under his, and put her legs into it. The metal lever shifted up and the long struts that held the doors closed popped free. Jennifer took one and Jacob took the other and they pulled them open.

The inside was packed to the very front with boxes. They were all plain brown, with no markings. Jacob pulled one loose and rested it on the ground.