Red Knight Falling (4 page)

FIVE

There was no straight shot from Logan International to our final destination. Instead, we flew into Portland, waited two hours in a barren terminal with nothing to do but count the minutes, then caught an old sixty-seat puddle jumper for the flight from Portland to Redmond. We were closer to sunrise than sunset, all the way into the dark and almost out the other side.

I leaned against the edge of my cramped canvas seat and half slept, half stared through the porthole window at a starless night void. And below, the forests. An endless horizon of rolling, rough green, mighty pines rising up like a bed of spears. The twin propellers whirred, making the cabin shiver and hum, lulling me into a dream.

I dreamed of a hedge maze, carved from black diamonds and eastern jade. And as I ran in silence, stumbling through turn after turn, I knew I was only getting farther away from the exit. At the heart of the maze, at the summit of every bad decision and mistake I’d ever made, my minotaur waited. The minotaur’s raspy breath sounded like the thrum of an airplane engine.

He didn’t need to hunt me down. He knew I’d come to him, eventually.

April’s gentle hand shook me awake. The first rays of sunlight filtered through the portholes as we taxied down a landing strip, the plane’s nose turned toward a small terminal. Roberts Field was a regional airport, serving a tiny handful of carriers with local flights. We disembarked on a rolling staircase—two porters helping to ease April’s wheelchair down the steps—and headed across the tarmac.

I was thankful I’d hung on to the olive army-surplus jacket from our disaster of a stakeout: a brisk wind ruffled my short blonde hair, the temperature hanging somewhere in the low fifties. I could taste diesel fumes in the back of my throat.

The terminal had a rustic, comfortable feel. Linder had called ahead to arrange our transportation; Jessie led the way to the Budget Rent a Car desk.

“Top-level emergency,” she murmured to me as we approached a tired-looking clerk. “Possible global crisis. You
know
we’re getting a serious muscle car this time. I can feel it in my bones.”

What she felt, after they’d confirmed our reservation and processed Jessie’s Oceanic Polymer corporate AmEx card, was a plastic tag clipped to the keys for a compact Ford Focus spattered in tree sap.

“That,” she said, standing out in the parking lot with her shoulders slumped, “just isn’t right. You know that’s not right.”

“It’s fuel efficient,” April said, rolling around to the passenger side.

I didn’t have to ask if I was driving. If a car didn’t have at least six cylinders, Jessie wasn’t interested. I just held out my open hand and caught the keys.

We had an hour’s drive from Redmond, most of it a straight shot along OR-126. We rolled down the windows and let the cool forest air wash away the night, crisp and clean and smelling like fresh-churned soil. The Cascade Mountains rose up in the distance, their white-capped peaks like fortress walls under a blue, cloudless sky.

A little over halfway there, just before turning northwest on US-20, we rolled through a town called Sisters. It was smaller than Talbot Cove, with a main street that looked like the set of a cowboy movie, frozen in time.

“Check this out,” Kevin said from the backseat, fixated on his phone. “They actually have rodeos here. Can we see a rodeo on our way back?”

“The only thing I want to see right now is a menu,” Jessie said, and my empty stomach growled in agreement. We stopped for breakfast at Bronco Billy’s Ranch Grill and Saloon. To my relief and Jessie’s visible disappointment, there were no showgirls, barroom brawls, or high-noon gunfights. There was, however, the best plate of french toast I’d tasted outside my mother’s kitchen: rich and fluffy, dripping with fresh butter and hot maple syrup. I ate too much. I had no regrets. I figured we were about to get plenty of exercise hiking through the wilderness.

The road to Suttle Lake was a string of graceful curving bends through a canyon of trees. The forest rose up on either side of us, tall and ancient and strong. The road felt like an embarrassing affectation, an attempt to carve some kind of scar into the face of the forest vastness, to prove humanity had dominion here.

I wondered, if we stopped tending the road, stopped laying down fresh layers of asphalt and rebar and fighting back the growth, how long it would take for the forest to swallow it back up again. A hundred years from now, would there be any proof we were here at all?

The GPS chimed and the forest walls parted, opening onto a vista of glittering blue water. Canvas sails rippled, catching the wind and sending sailboats coasting across the placid lake, while fly-fishers cast their lines at the water’s edge and tourists in pumpkin-orange life vests paddled canoes close to the shoreline.

Five minutes later, I was pulling into the parking lot of the Lakeview Lodge. The lodge was bigger than the last Hilton I’d stayed at, only three stories tall but stretching out long, elegant wings near the water’s edge, and built with a log-cabin aesthetic. Signs pointed the way toward trails behind the hotel, where actual log cabins offered more rustic housing for weekend adventurers.

“I looked this place up on our way over,” Kevin said, opening his door. “Technically we’re still inside Deschutes National Forest; the feds give very limited building permission, so the lodge is the only hotel within fifty miles.”

“Meaning,” Jessie said, “unless they decided to camp out in the woods, anybody else on the Red Knight’s trail is going to be staying here, too. Eyes open.”

I watched happy families walking the trails around the lodge. Hiking, toting tackle boxes, enjoying the last good days before winter came.

“Do you miss it?” April asked, rolling along beside me.

I blinked, snapped out of a daydream I didn’t know I was having.

“Miss what?”

She nodded at a passing family. A young woman carrying a wicker picnic basket, a toddler riding high on his father’s shoulders.

“The days when you didn’t know what you know. The bliss of ignorance. You can’t see the world like they can, not anymore.”

Threat assessments. That’s how I saw the world. Checking hands, checking angles, always on the watch for guns and bad intentions. The Bureau trained that into me. Working for Vigilant Lock just drove the lesson bone-deep.

“I don’t mind giving up my day in the sun so other people can have theirs.” I glanced sidelong at her. “Are you psychoanalyzing me?”

She smiled. “Old habits.”

The lodge’s foyer was the size of a small ballroom, with rustic chairs and sofas arrayed around a gray stone fireplace. The trophy head of a buck kept a glassy-eyed watch over the check-in desk, opposite the stuffed, rearing husk of a shaggy black bear.

“Nothing says hello like dead animals,” Jessie said under her breath.

“Let’s focus on the important thing here,” Kevin replied. “They have Wi-Fi.”

The man behind the counter wore owlish glasses and bright-red suspenders, and his hair had receded to a ring of pale-white curls around the edges of his scalp. He greeted us with a smile.

“Temple, reservations for four,” Jessie told him. We waited while he hunt-and-pecked his way across a computer keyboard, squinting at his bulky antique monitor.

“Temple, Temple,” he murmured, then perked up. “Here we go! Party of four. We’ve got two rooms reserved for you, 207 and 208, in the east wing of the main building. Just go right up the main staircase and take a left.”

“Do you happen to have an elevator?” April asked him.

He glanced across the counter and down at her, as if noticing her for the first time. His face went beet red.

“Oh, um, of course, I’m sorry. Just down that hall, across the lobby.”

I gave the room another once-over as a pack of middle-aged tourists—all wearing blue T-shirts reading
S
CHUMER
F
AMILY
V
ACATION
’16
—jostled their way up the stairs.

“Are you usually this crowded this time of year?” I asked the clerk. “Seems a little late in the season.”

“It
is
peculiar. Normally August is our peak month. Still, you won’t hear me complaining!” He beamed and handed over our keys. They were leashed to fat lacquered tags carved like tiny logs, room numbers artfully burned into the wood. “Now, don’t forget: we serve up a continental breakfast right here in the lobby, every morning from eight to ten. Completely complimentary, but once you taste Norma’s coffee, you’ll be amazed we don’t charge for it. There’s also a wine-and-cheese tasting every evening at seven.”

The elevator had been an afterthought at best, a cramped cage that barely fit the four of us, wheezing its way up to the second floor. Once the doors sealed us in, Jessie folded her arms.

“Okay, we are now officially in hostile territory. We don’t know who the competition is, or how many of them there are, but we
do
have competition. See anything hinky so far?”

“While I’m inclined to say an entire family wearing custom-printed vacation shirts qualifies,” April said drily, “it’s not suspicious so much as a questionable fashion judgment.”

“We can rule out anyone traveling with children,” I said. “That narrows down the field.”

“Can we?” April asked me.

“You don’t think so?”

“The Russian SVR has been known to use children in surveillance operations, precisely
because
it throws suspicion off their ‘parents.’ Mossad is also fond of that technique.” The elevator ground to a halt, doors chiming. “Until we know who else is after the Red Knight, and their intentions, I don’t think we should rule out anyone who looks fieldwork capable.”

At the end of a long balcony hall, overlooking a gallery lined in forest-green carpet, our rooms awaited. They were bigger than I expected, and cozier, too, with two queen beds draped under patchwork afghan quilts.

“Now we just need to hook up with—” Jessie paused, checking her phone. “Speak of the devil.”

“Agent Lawrence?” I asked.

“On his way up. Let’s hope he’s easy to work with.”

That was the first of many hopes that didn’t come true that week.

SIX

Lawrence looked like the unholy offspring of a pit bull and an IRS agent. He glared out from behind amber-tinted bifocals, holding his shoulders like he’d forgotten to take his shirt off the hanger before he wore it. Jessie offered him a handshake and a smile as he stepped into the guest room. He didn’t accept either one.

“Wonderful,” was the first thing he said, looking over the four of us. “So this is what I have to work with.”

“I’m Jessie Temple,” Jessie said, gesturing my way. “This is—”

“I know who you all are.” He barged past us, setting a bulky canvas messenger bag on the dresser. “Linder briefed me in the air. And you’ll forgive my lack of social niceties, but I was just pulled out of deep cover for this. Every minute I’m not with my team, they’re in serious danger. I can’t believe your cell doesn’t have a single dedicated scientist. Then again, considering what I’ve heard about you, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I am a scientist,” April said.

He tugged out a laptop and fired it up, pressing his thumb to the center of the touch pad. The pad strobed blue, and the words
Print Confirmed: Unlocking
flickered on the screen.

“For the record, Dr. Cassidy,
psychology
is not a
science
.”

She arched an eyebrow but didn’t reply. Lawrence brought up a chart on the screen—a descending parabola, like the one Linder had shown us in the briefing, but laden with trajectory and angle equations.

“This is my most up-to-date calculation, using telemetry acquired five hours ago,” he explained. “Going by this, the Red Knight—or whatever will be left of it, after reentry—should crash north of our location. I can narrow the crash window to a two-mile radius, maybe tighter as more data comes in.”

“Needle in a haystack.” Jessie shook her head. “When’s it coming down?”

“Tomorrow evening. Most likely a few hours before midnight. We’ll want to get an early start.”

“We’ll be ready,” Jessie said. “Linder said you’d have something for us?”

He picked up the messenger bag and emptied it onto one of the bedspreads, neatly organizing the contents as he spoke.

“Right. Since you’re operating under civilian cover, he asked me to procure substitutes for your usual service weapons. So: four Glock 43 pistols, and a supply of nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition.”

“I get a gun?” Kevin asked, lighting up.

“No,” Jessie told him. “I get
two
guns.”

“These are all Vigilant standard-deniable packages,” Lawrence told us. “Acid-seared serial numbers and modified barrels to confuse any forensic examinations of spent shells. They cannot be connected to any crimes on record, or traced to their point of origin.”

He held up one of the pistols, turning it sideways to show off the tiny frame.

“The model forty-three is designed for concealed carry. You have a six-round magazine and your standard polymer frame. Light but very durable. These pieces have been further modified for a featherweight trigger pull. Don’t get too attached—I’ll be taking them with me when the mission is over. They’re on loan from Beach Cell’s armory.”

“Your team has its own
armory
?” I said.

“You don’t?”

The next item in his hands was a thick pair of eyeglasses, with Buddy Holly–style black plastic frames. “Now, then. Linder advised we may be encountering rival actors in the field, and he’d like as much intel as we can safely gather on them. These glasses are equipped with a sixteen-megapixel camera, capable of recording still pictures, video, and sound.”

“Wait,” Kevin said, “you get
gadgets
? We don’t get gadgets.”

Lawrence rolled his eyes and held up a fountain pen. “This is the control. Press down on the cap, like so: one click to take a single photograph, two rapid clicks to begin and end video recording. Keep it in your pocket, and you can operate the glasses without ever touching them. Perfectly discreet.”

Kevin looked at April. “Why don’t we get gadgets?”

Lawrence turned his wrist, flashing a titanium Raymond Weil watch. “My wristwatch possesses similar functionality. And before you ask, no. You can’t have one.”

Jessie scooped up the glasses from the bedspread, gave the chunky frames a dubious look, shrugged, and held them out to me.

“More your style than mine,” she said.

My fingers slid across the curve of the glasses, but my eyes were on Lawrence. In the field, being able to trust your partners can mean the difference between life and death. We didn’t have his trust, or his respect, and that meant we wouldn’t be operating at our best when we headed into the wilderness. There’s an interrogation technique called mirroring—you echo a suspect’s body language and mannerisms, bringing them into unconscious alignment with you. I tried it on him now, keeping my movements sparse and direct, matching the tilt of his head and the aggressive bent of his shoulders.

“Storage capacity?” I asked him. Not mimicking his voice, but taking his clipped tone and making it my own.

“Thirty-two gigabytes of onboard storage.”

I slipped them on, getting used to the fit. The lenses were simple sheets of glass.

“Good. Transfer medium?”

His scowl softened, just a bit. Now he had eyes only for me, a one-on-one conversation in a crowded room.

“Bluetooth. It’ll pair with your phone. I . . . can show you how, if you need help.”

I shook my head. “I won’t keep you; you have more important things to deal with. We’ll rendezvous first thing in the morning. Thank you, Agent Lawrence.”

“Thank you, Agent Black. Can you source some all-terrain vehicles?”

“Done,” I said.

“Well, it’s good to see there’s at least one professional on this team.” Lawrence closed his laptop shell and shouldered his bag before handing me a slip of paper. “I’m staying in cabin four, up the trail, where I will be spending the remainder of the day trying to narrow down our search window. This is my cell number, but unless the lodge is burning down around your ears, do
not
interrupt me. We’ll rendezvous in the lobby at eight a.m. sharp.”

“Let me just say it’s great to be working with another team in the field”—Jessie paused as Lawrence brushed past her and let himself out, slamming the door behind him—“you
enormous
asshole.”

“He’ll be fine tomorrow,” I said. “He just needed a little reassurance, that’s all. I gave it to him.”

Kevin played with the glasses-camera’s control pen, tugging the cap and twisting it.

“Seriously,” he said. “I really want to know. Why don’t we get gadgets? This is some straight-up James Bond stuff.”

Jessie snatched the pen out of his hand, tossing it over to me. “Because Jason Bourne can kick James Bond’s ass, little man, and that’s how we roll: car chases and parkour.”

“Couldn’t we do car chases and parkour
with
gadgets?”

April rolled around to the side of the bed and helped herself to one of the Glock 43s, one eye squinting as she aimed down the sights.

“While I partake in neither of said pleasures,” she said, “it
would
be nice to upgrade our field equipment once in a while. These are quite lovely.”

“Speaking of equipment,” I said, “not only are we nowhere near equipped for tromping around in the woods after dark, we didn’t even have time to pack toothbrushes. Let’s drive back to Sisters. I’m pretty sure we passed a sporting-goods store on the way.”

“We’re gonna want bug spray,” Kevin said, opening the door for us. “Lots of bug spray. And for the record? Daniel Craig’s Bond would stomp Jason Bourne into a mudhole. Indisputable fact.”

“Indisputable,”
Jessie echoed, grinning. “Oh, let’s talk about
that
in the car.”

We got back from Sisters around seven, laden with bags of gear. Nothing as high-tech as Agent Lawrence’s spy watch, but some sturdy new boots and focused-beam lamps with heavy-duty batteries would make navigating the forest after dark that much easier. I had picked up a change of clothes for tomorrow, prompting a quirked eyebrow from Jessie as she stood behind me in the cash-register line.

“Checkered flannel shirt, huh?” she said.

“Flannel’s warm. What about it?”

“Nothing,” she said, all mock innocence as she looked up to the store ceiling. “Nothing at all. Hey, don’t you want to buy some Doc Martens with that?”

I showed her the pair of boots I’d picked out.

“I am. Why?”

“Okay,” Jessie said, “now you’re just messing with me.”

“What?”

“Swear to God, you dress like my last girlfriend.” She held up one finger. “
Not
a compliment.”

Back in the lodge’s lobby, the receptionist and a pair of assistants were draping white plastic sheets over folding card tables. One table sported an assortment of dark glass bottles for the seven o’clock wine tasting, and another assistant swooped past us with a grocery-store cheese tray under a plastic dome.

“Thinking what I’m thinking?” Jessie asked me.

“Perfect time to scope out our fellow vacationers,” I said. “Let’s stash our purchases, come back, and mingle a little.”

By a quarter after seven, they had a full house. Light classical music played over tinny speakers, trying to give the brightly lit lobby a little ambience. Some of the guests orbited the room with wine in plastic stemware and cheese slices on little paper plates, while the group outings (including the extended family in matching blue shirts) mostly kept to themselves. I pushed the camera glasses up on my nose.

“It’s not the Four Seasons,” April said, eyeing a bottle on a nearby table and squinting at the label, “but it’s a pleasant gesture. Even if I wouldn’t cook with that vintage.”

“Can I have some wine?” Kevin asked.

“No,” April told him, at the same moment Jessie held up a finger and said, “One glass.” They gave each other a look.

I kept my eyes on the crowd. Staying casual, glancing to hands and hip pockets, checking for suspicious bulges. If anyone was carrying concealed, I didn’t see it—then again, my new Glock rode snug against my hip, and nobody would be spotting that without a pat-down, either.

“Pick any winners?” Jessie asked.

I shook my head. There were forty, maybe fifty people milling around the room, a lot of retirees, some younger couples, but I didn’t know what I was looking
for
. You can’t make a profile without information, and all we knew for certain was that we weren’t the only hunters in this forest.

“What’s your take on them?” I asked, giving a nod toward a group by the cheese table. Seven tourists, college age at most, were laughing and talking up a storm. They looked more like a hipster coffee-shop or library crowd than the kind of friends who go on wilderness adventures. Nothing suspicious or sinister, but unusual enough to catch my eye.

“Let’s say hi,” Jessie said, but Kevin caught her sleeve.

“Hold on,” he said, looking inspired. “I’ve got this.”

“Kevin, fieldwork isn’t exactly your—”

“
Trust
me.”

He sidled up to a pretty blonde in purple cat-eye glasses. He nodded at her T-shirt, with a picture of a sword-wielding monster like something out of
Lord of the Rings
.

“Alliance,” he said, “or Horde?”

She smiled. “Horde, of
course
. What server?”

“Wyrmrest Accord.”

“Me, too!” She shifted her cheese plate to her left hand and stuck out her right. “I’m Bette, by the way, spelled with a
t
and an
e
on the end.”

Jessie leaned in close to me, staring at them.

“Harmony,” she murmured, “did you understand a damn word they just said?”

I watched as Bette brought Kevin into the circle of conversation, introducing him around.

“Not even a little bit. But whatever it was, it worked.”

I turned my head, hand clicking the control pen as I took a few quick photographs.

“Kevin,” Jessie said, “has slick moves. Who knew? Okay, let’s all split up and mingle.”

When it comes to fieldcraft, mingling isn’t my forte. And when it comes to talking to strangers, I’m a lot more comfortable doing it across an interrogation-room table. Still, I poured myself a plastic glass of cheap red wine and put on what I hoped was a winning smile, diving into the party. I didn’t drink the wine—never on duty—but it made a good prop.

Later, I wished I’d drunk the wine. These were the last peaceful moments we had before the entire mission went straight to hell.