Torn (30 page)

So I’m in the tub thinking about stupid Bonnie and her stupid Clyde when Missy starts shrieking. “Oh my god, Eldon! Here they come!”

First, the power goes out and we’re plunged into
darkness. Missy’s pathetic whimpering makes me almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

Next thing, the sounds of shrieking metal—the shutters being pried off—and then breaking glass, and men shouting, and the sting of something in the air, maybe tear gas. I can hear the Barlows coughing and wailing.

Then a window smashes in the guest bathroom, right over the tub. Something hits my legs, nearly stopping my heart. I can’t see, but it hisses madly—a canister of noxious gas—and suddenly my eyes are tearing and I’m choking around the gag.

Coughing, coughing. Can’t breathe.

I manage to roll out of the tub and lay gasping, facedown on the cool tile floor. Whatever the gas or smoke is, it scalds my sinuses, induces fits of convulsive coughing. I’m desperate to get the damn gag out of my mouth—can’t breathe! can’t breathe!—but nothing works, and then I’m out of control, convulsing, as if my body is trying to vomit out the intrusive rubber gag in my mouth.

White pinpoints of light in my eyes—am I passing out from lack of oxygen?—and the lights become powerful flashlights. Muffled shouting, “Got her! Got her!” I can see just enough to recognize dark uniforms, men looking like big, scary bugs with their glistening gas masks, and then they’re carrying me out of the bath, into the smoke-filled bedroom, and down the grand staircase.

The air improves as we descend, although my eyes still sting, my throat and nose continue to burn. I kick and
writhe—take the gag out of my mouth, you bastards!—but they’ve got me and I can’t get away.

The power comes back on and through my tears I see the Barlows facedown on the foyer floor, bound hand and foot with plastic ties, just as they had bound me. They’re crying and begging for mercy—We didn’t know! We didn’t know!—and then the handsome, hawk-nosed man with the mustache looms in, checking me out, and for the first time I’m truly terrified, rather than merely frightened.

Something in his eyes. Cold, calculating, dismissive.

He jerks his chin. “Outside. Put in van.”

As if I’m a piece of noxious garbage to be dispensed with.

The men who carry me have slipped off their gas masks and somehow it’s shocking to see how young they look, how perfectly ordinary. There’s no particular animosity in their eyes—indeed, they avoid making eye contact with me, ignoring my muffled pleas to remove the awful, choking gag—but no connection, either. I’m a task to be accomplished, a bundle delivered, but I’m not making it easy for them.

We’re at the front door when the sun explodes.

Night, I’m thinking. Can’t be any sun.

A concussive blast follows the hot, white flash, com pressing my lungs, squeezing out the air. People are screaming, shouting. I’m completely blind, the flash still burning deep behind my eyes. Has the house exploded? Am I dying? Already dead?

More than anything I want to scream, but can’t.

I’m on my back in the doorway, completely blind,
writhing for air. Then strong arms lift me up, cradling me like an infant, and fingers gently pry the gag from my mouth, holding me as I suck in the cold air of night—we’re outside now, how did that happen—and I hear his deep and gentle voice saying, “I gotcha, Mrs. Corbin.”

Then he flips me up onto his big shoulders and runs away from the shouting, into the night.

Shane.

He doesn’t run far, less than a hundred yards, I’m guessing, but by the time he puts me down I can see again, although dimly. We’re on frozen, windswept ground, next to a metal shed or structure. The Barlow place is some distance down the mountain from where we’re crouched. It looks to be almost completely consumed by black smoke. Uniformed men run in and out of the smoke looking panicked, though somehow furtive.

“A flash-bang grenade, a few smoke bombs,” Shane explains as he clips away the plastic ties, freeing my arms and legs.

Behind me the shed door opens and a familiar voice says, “Quickly! We don’t have much time!”

Ruler Weems, urging us inside.

Shane helps me stand—my feet are still numb from the binding—and hobble into the deeper darkness of the little shed. Barely room enough for the three of us to stand, and so dark I can’t see my hands in front of my face.

Weems clicks on a powerful flashlight, aims it at the concrete floor. “Keep your hands at your sides. This is a
transformer station. Touch the wrong thing and you’ll die instantly.”

Following his instructions we press our backs to the metal wall, inching along until he tells us to stop. Person ally I wouldn’t trust the little man to guide me across the street. I’m following Shane, who came and got me, just as he promised.

Weems crouches, fiddles with something on the floor. It makes a faint hydraulic sound, the sigh of pressure released, and then a portion of the concrete floor lifts, bathing our legs in a greenish light.

Beneath, steel rungs go down into an illuminated shaft.

“We must hurry,” Weems says.

“You think Kavashi knows about the tunnel?” Shane wants to know.

“He’ll figure it out eventually,” Weems says. “Right now I’m worried about the boy. What they’ll do to him when they realize we’ve escaped. Let’s go! Ladies first.”

I drop into the tunnel. Praying it will lead me to Noah.

1. Something About The Boy

As it turns out, torture isn’t necessary. Or not much of it. The Barlows have seen the error of their ways and are eager to cooperate. If Vash understands them correctly, and the whimpering makes it difficult, their defense is that Ruler Weems made them do it. They’re clueless about Randall Shane, or how he happened to escape from a locked holding cell, and have no idea where he might have taken Haley Corbin. All the Barlows know for sure is that whatever happened, it isn’t their fault, and to make up for it they’d like to become part of Eva’s faction, please. Pretty please with millions on top.

“Not my decision,” Vash had informed them. “Maybe Evangeline forgive you, maybe not.”

That had provoked much weeping and whining. Vash has a low tolerance for whiners—there’s something about a pleading voice that sets his teeth on edge. Had it been entirely up to him, the Barlows would have perished in their own home, victims of an unfortunate fire. Not as punishment, but because he finds them to be as irritating
as they are untrustworthy. As it is, their fate remains undetermined—Eva has too much on her mind, and seems eager to blame Vash for not having the godlike powers to know everything and be everywhere at once.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” she says with her acid tongue. “You had him and you let him get away? This so-called nobody, this supposedly harmless man who used to be with the FBI? And then the harmless nobody steals one of your tactical vans, waits until your men retrieve the woman from the house, then steals her away and they both vanish in a puff of smoke. Is that about right?”

“Somebody help him, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

When Evangeline gets like this, frustrated because things haven’t gone her way, she looks as if the only thing that would make her feel better is the opportunity to kill someone with her own hands. Vash would be sympathetic—when he was slightly younger he often indulged in such excessive reactions—except that in this instance he’s the someone Eva would like to kill. Something to keep in mind, when it comes to long-term survival strategies.

“Any idea who helped him?” she asks sweetly.

“We review the video. Takes two hours, maybe three. Many cameras, much data.”

Eva the Diva gets up close and personal, bumping her hips into his pelvis, and not in a friendly way. More like the sexual aggression of a praying mantis, eager to be off with his head. “You don’t need to find it on the cameras, darling. We both know who it was.”

Vash shrugs. “Could be Weems, yes. Is possible. Or maybe he bribes one of my men.”

“Trust me, Wendy did it. And you know how I know?
Because I was watching.
You can’t be bothered, apparently, so I’ve been keeping an eye on Mr. Ugly. And guess what, he wasn’t at home. Again. So I guess he must have borrowed that invisibility cloak from Harry Potter, huh? The one that lets him come and go without being seen?”

“Who is this Harry Potter?”

“Don’t be dense, darling.” She hooks her fingers in his belt, tugs him even closer. “The point is, we can’t control Wendy if we don’t know where he is. Silly me, I thought I stressed that. I thought I made it clear. But apparently you don’t think it’s important to keep my most dangerous rival under surveillance. My blood enemy. The wretched little man who would happily dance on my grave, given the chance. No, you let him come and go as he pleases.”

“I have men looking at blueprints. He must have hidden exit from Bunker.”

“How is it possible that you wouldn’t know about it?”

“No one can know what they don’t know. This is point. Okay? Maybe he makes modification in Bunker before I take over security. Some way to get out of Bunker without being seen. Yes, that’s what I believe. He comes, he goes, we can’t see.”

Vash is fairly certain he knows where Weems’s secret exit terminates—inside a bathroom, out of camera range—but decides not to share until he’s certain, and has a plan to deal with it. Eva’s inclination is to go in with guns blazing, but Vash is keenly aware that the Bunker is well fortified and that Ruler Weems will have a plan of defense. Plus, with a former FBI Special Agent on the loose, now is the time for caution.

“This nobody who got away,” Eva says. “Tell me how you’re going to catch him.”

“Road has been closed, campus being searched. Also private residence. He can’t get away. Only way out is to hike through mountains. Thirty miles, winter conditions. Impossible. So maybe they freeze to death.”

“So you think they’re trying to get away?”

“Yeah, of course,” he responds, surprised by the question. “They know they can’t get to boy.”

“And what happens if they make it?” she says teasingly, her fingers at work beneath his belt.

“Bad things. Not good. The mother give testimony, Feds get search warrant from judge, come here looking for child.”

“That’s what you think?”

“What else?”

Eva smiles with her teeth. “I looked this man up, this nobody you said not to worry about? I read the blogs, darling, testimony from grateful parents, and I came to my own conclusion. I don’t think he’s trying to get away. He’s going to try and rescue the boy. That’s what he does.”

Vash disengages her questing hand, steps away. “Good,” he says, clearing his throat. “If he does that, we catch him for sure. Nobody gets into Pinnacle.”

“Like Wendy can’t get out of the Bunker without us seeing him?”

Vash has no reply.

“Let’s do something about the boy,” Eva muses.

2. Bulldog, He Mutters

For a while after Jed died, I kept having this dream about a long dark corridor. I was in a hospital or mortuary
and somewhere at the end of the corridor was a room where I would be asked to identify the body of my dead husband. I wanted to get there, wanted to see Jed one last time, but the corridor seemed to go on forever and I could never get to the room before the dream ended. It wasn’t a nightmare, exactly. There was no fear, just a great longing. Then the walls would begin to close in and I would wake up in a cold sweat, missing Jed so bad that my whole body ached.

The dream comes back to me as we hurry along the tunnel in single file, Weems leading the way, with me in the middle and Shane following in a crouch. The tunnel, Weems explains, is made of fiberglass pipe, six feet in circumference—plenty tall for me and the strange little man, but not nearly big enough for Shane to stand upright. He can touch both sides of the tunnel with the palms of his hands and does so, to help keep upright as he scoots along, hunched over. The escape tunnels were installed when Arthur Conklin was worried about criminals who might be drawn to the Ruler’s wealth. Apparently there was a time when the cult leader feared he might be kidnapped and held for a billion-dollar ransom. The tunnels were a way out, as well as a place of refuge. They appear on no blueprints, their existence known only to Arthur and his trusted associate, Wendall Weems. The cult leader, recently remarried, did not even inform his new wife of the secret escape tunnel, lest she be part of some plot against him.

“That was during his paranoid phase,” Weems explains. “He got over it, of course. The thing about Arthur, he was always learning, exceeding the limitations of the ordinary mind.”

I’m still feeling a bit stunned, not so much by the flash of the stun grenade itself as by the rapid turn of events. Only a few days ago I’d been snatched from the airport, caged like a dog, flown across the country, confined to a shuttered house, tormented with video images of my son being brainwashed, and told there was nothing I could do about it. True, I’d been clinging to the notion that Shane would find me, but it was the kind of hope that keeps people buying lottery tickets. What were the odds?

In his laconic way he makes it sound like no big deal. “You were the one who told me about the Rulers,” he points out. “So I came to where the Rulers live and started poking around. Just basic investigation.”

My joy at being freed lasts about as long as it takes for a deep breath. There’s no room for joy in my heart until I have Noah in my arms. And if Weems is right, freeing me has put my son in immediate danger.

“We’ve started the clock ticking,” he says, his melodious voice booming in the tunnel. “Kavashi knows about Mr. Shane’s connection to the FBI. He’ll be expecting a raid, and taking precautions. That means destroying evidence, and, Mrs. Corbin, your son is evidence.”

All the more reason to hurry. Shane, crouching and in constant danger of bumping his head on the tunnel lights, is having trouble keeping up, despite his long legs.

“I feel like a bug in a straw,” he complains. “How much farther?”

“We’ll take a short break to catch our breath,” Weems announces, halting. “To answer your question, there are more than three miles of tunnels. One branch goes to my bunker, the other to the Pinnacle.”

“Your bunker?” I ask. “What, like Hitler’s bunker?”

“Most assuredly not,” he says huffily, turning to look me in the eye. “And what would a woman your tender age know of Hitler and his bunker?”

“The History Channel.”

“Of course.” He nods to himself. “What we have long called our bunker, for lack of a better term, was originally constructed in Arthur’s paranoid period, like these very tunnels. Built mostly underground, as an impregnable fortress—although nothing is, of course, truly impregnable. Later he moved to the Pinnacle, which is higher up the mountain. The Pinnacle is quite spectacular, really. A great cathedral of glass and steel and stone, and unlike the Bunker it looks outward. Arthur liked to say it greets the world. He thought of it as a great ship sailing upon a sea of clouds. Of course this being Colorado, most of the time there aren’t actually very many clouds, but you get the idea.”

Shane, resting his long body against the curve of the pipe, says, “You’re sure the boy is in the Pinnacle?”

“I’m sure.”

“You have spies there? Someone from the Evangeline faction who reports to you?”

“I have my sources.”

“We need to call in the cavalry,” Shane says emphatically.

“The cavalry. How very romantic. By all means, alert your colleagues.”

“You have no objection?” Shane asks, sounding surprised.

“No. The time has come. As I say, the clock is ticking, and Eva herself is the time bomb. No one knows when she might go off, what she might do, but I have no doubt she’s
capable of unleashing great violence, if she thinks that is what it will take to secure her position.”

“And you’d like her out of the way,” Shane points out.

“Absolutely. She’s been a disaster. We are a small organization. There are less than ten thousand full-fledged, dues-paying members. We can’t afford to be divided, fighting amongst ourselves.”

Shane nods, studying Weems, whose face always seems to be averted, conveniently shadowed. Partly it’s his simian, jutting brow and his deep-set eyes, but I can’t help thinking that the strange little man reacts to light like a creature who doesn’t want to be seen.

Shane says, “So Evangeline gets arrested and you become the big cheese, the ultimate Ruler.”

“What I will do,” Weems responds, with great dignity, “is see that things continue as Arthur would have wanted. Strengthening the organization. Building connections into the mainstream. Continuing to interpret Arthur’s writing and teach Arthur’s lessons. Spreading the word.”

Shane says, “And you’ll do the interpreting. You’ll decide what words get spread.”

“Who better than me?”

Shane stands up, as best he can. “We’ll need a phone, an Internet connection, or a radio. Some way to make contact with the outside world.”

“Kavashi will have cut off landline and broadband by now,” Weems says. “There’s a satellite phone in the Bunker. You can use that.”

Shane takes a deep breath, touches my shoulder. “You hanging in there?”

“Yup.”

What else can I say? My fate, and my son’s fate, is in Shane’s hands now. His and the FBI, if we can make contact.

“I thought you were delusional,” Shane confesses. “That first day. Bonkers with grief.”

“Why did you stay?”

He shrugs his big shoulders. “Something about you, I guess. You looked so ferocious.”

“Me?”

“Like a little bulldog. I knew you’d never let go, never give up.”

“Bulldog, huh? Is that meant to be a compliment?”

His eyes slide away from mine. “Just an observation. I certainly didn’t mean you look like a bulldog.”

Weary and frightened for my son as I am, I can’t help but grin. “Whatever,” I tell him. “That was a lucky day. The best in a while.”

Weems clears his throat. “We need to keep moving, folks. It’s only a matter of time before Vash figures out the tunnels.”

We trudge along for what seems like a great distance, the tunnel inclining steadily upward, then abruptly switching to double back in the opposite direction. Weems suggests we think of it as an underground switchback road, which doesn’t mean much to me. Every yard is bringing me closer to Noah. That’s what I cling to.

At one point we come to a vertical shaft. It contains an open elevator car that has the size and heft of an oversize toy, but Weems insists that it has been rated for a thousand pounds, considerably more than our combined weight. It is, he assures us, perfectly safe.