Dead Man's Switch (18 page)
Authors: Sigmund Brouwer
As if to prove it, a walkie-talkie crackled. “Team two, come in. Report.”
So
that's
why replacing the other two hadn't worked. Walkie-talkies. When they didn't report, the warden realized something was wrong.
“Let's go,” Mack said. “If we move fast, we'll get to the cliff long before another team or two can make it.”
“Killdeer,” King blurted.
“What?”
Killdeer. Yeah, that was the name of the bird that pretended to be hurt. Killdeer. Strange, how the mind worked.
“Nothing,” King said. “I'm ready. Let's go.”
At the edge of the cliff, they were out of the trees and exposed. The wind was much stronger, and the crashing of the waves on jagged rocks a hundred feet below had the frightening quality of constant thunder. But the open rock wasn't wide enough to land a chopper. Anyone after them would have to approach on foot. They had time, then. King held a flashlight to guide Mack as Mack assembled lightweight rods of aluminum alloys that he'd taken from his own backpack. Mack wasn't wasting time bolting the frames together. Instead, he was using duct tape, and the ripping sounds of the tape pulling loose from the roll was audible above the wind.
As he had explained, Mack didn't need to bolt the frame together because at most they only needed about 20 yards of outward carry and the 100 feet of drop to the waters of Puget Sound.
Hang gliders. Two of them. From Mack's backpack. The last and final hidden weapon they needed to escape.
Mack worked with the same unhurried efficiency he showed in his woodworking shop. Nothing about him gave an indication that more hunters were undoubtedly in pursuit and that their locations would be clearly indicated by the thermal sensors here at the edge of the forbidden zone.
All they needed was time to get into the water and another five minutes to swim. By then, even when it would be obvious where they'd gone, it would be impossible for helicopter searchlights to find them.
Equally impossible for thermal sensors in a chopper to detect them. The wet suits and rubber hoodies that would protect them from the killing coldness of the water would also hold in their body heat and keep it from betraying their presence. Especially with the snorkels to help them keep their faces and swim masks in the water.
Mack was already working on the frame of the second glider. He had given calm instructions on what King needed to do for a foot launch into the wind. Neither of them were going to strap in with a harness. This was insanely dangerous, but as Mack had pointed out, even if each of them only held on to each crossbar for ten seconds and then dropped, they would have cleared the dangerous rocks and would land in open and deep water, protected from impact by their rubber suits.
“We're good here,” Mack said, straightening from his task. “Let's get the decoys in place and put the wings on. To get this far and have the hang gliders blow away while we get the blankets ready would be a real shame.”
Decoys.
Mack was referring to a second set of camping blankets that had been stowed in King's backpack. The first had been the Mylar-coated space blankets, meant to reflect heat. Campers also sometimes used heating blankets, powered by 12-volt batteries, with adjustable temperatures. Mack had preset the blanket dial to high, which would get as close as possible to a human body temperature.
Behind them, King and Mack had set up man-sized tripods made of branches lashed together with shoelaces. Now it was time to drape the heat blankets over the tripods and hold the blankets down against the wind by setting heavy rocks on the edges. Mack was confident that these threw off an obvious thermal glow that easily looked like the smudged outline of a human.
Back to the hang glider frames. Mack slipped the nylon wings in place.
He lifted one and handed it toward King. The wing sagged. Mack set it down and grabbed the second one.
“Take this,” Mack said. “Looks like one of the frames broke inside the backpack when I bashed the first guy.”
“Butâ”
“Son, not a word.”
King had only occasionally heard that tone of voice from Mack, and because Mack used it so infrequently, it had a lot of power.
King took the hang glider from Mack. The wind tugged against it.
He fought the wind, holding the hang glider with one hand and holding the flashlight with the other as Mack unfurled the nylon wing on the other hang glider and found the broken part of the frame. Mack wrapped it with more duct tape.
He grunted with satisfaction. “Yep. We're good.”
As he began to put the nylon wing back in place on that half of the glider, both of them froze at a sound that grew above the thunder of the water against rock.
Chopper
. Murdoch wasn't sending men in by foot. And just as quickly, Mack unfroze.
“We cut that close,” Mack said. “Let's go.”
They stood side by side and faced the edge of the cliff, wind plucking at the wings.
“Remember,” Mack said. “Five steps, launch, and keep the nose down slightly.”
“Got it.”
A huge beam of light hit the ground about 200 yards away. Maybe Murdoch wasn't going to drop more men. Maybe he was just going to shoot them at the edge of the cliff, where they were totally exposed.
“No time!” Mack said. “We need to be in the air before we're spotted. If they see the hang glider, all of this was wasted.”
King should have known when Mack said
hang glider
, not
hang gliders.
But he didn't figure that out until later. Just as he didn't figure out till later that Mack had been pretending to fix the broken frame when in reality, no amount of duct tape would have made it possible to fly.
But that was later.
Mack said. “I love you, son. More than life. Always remember that.”
And before King could reply, Mack shouted, “Go!”
Mack began to run forward to launch. King matched him stride for stride.
But when they reached the end of the cliff and King soared into the air, there was nobody beside him.
Just like that, King was in the air. Alone. Hanging from aluminum braces of the hang glider. Swooping away from the cliffs.
He looked over his left shoulder for Mack. Then his right shoulder. It was dark, but he should have seen something. Anything.
He turned his head hard to look behind him. And then saw.
A pinprick of light on the cliff's edge. Getting smaller as the hang glider took him away. The light blinked three times. Black. Then blinked three times.
Mack was still on the cliff's edge. Signaling him.
King blinked against tears.
When he looked at the cliff again for the flashlight signal, there was nothing.
Below him, he heard the barking of seals. Even that began to fade as the hang glider took him out into Puget Sound.
Lower and lower until the deep black waters reached up and sucked at the edges of the hang glider and took him into the shock of cold against the skin of his exposed face.
As both wings of the hang glider dragged into the water, King let go of the brace and rolled into the water.
The wet suit gave him buoyancy, and each kick of the flippers moved him with ease through the currents.
He told himself to kick and glide, kick and glide. Not to think. About Mack, left behind on the island. About monsters in the deep. Don't think. Kick and glide.
Every few strokes, he glanced at the glowing GPS on his wrist, following the arrow.
Kick and glide. No thoughts. Kick and glide.
The waves were moderate, and occasionally one would curl and splash into his face, and he would taste salt.
Kick and glide. No thoughts. Kick and glide.
He managed to fall into an illusion of freedom. The floatation effect of the wet suit and the efficiency of the flippers and the endlessness of the water and the rhythm of kick and glide put him in a separate universe where time and gravity didn't exist.
Kick and glide. No thoughts. Kick and glide.
It was like a shock of electricity when the rounded object bumped his belly.
Killer whale, he thought instantly. Then relaxed.
He'd scraped the top of a rock.
Moments later, a crunch of sand took him out of the alternate universe.
He'd made the far shore. With one immediate task. Find the cache of clothing Mack had promised would be waiting at GPS position C.
But, he vowed, that wasn't going to be the end of it.
“Visiting hours are over for the morning,” the nurse behind the desk said with tartness in her voice. “Come back after one this afternoon.”
King had been out of the water for seven hours. Not even noon, and he felt as if it had been a full day. But then, yes, it had. No sleep during the long night chase and a swim across the strait. The dry clothes that had been waiting for him as Mack had promised had helped, but only slightly. He'd found money as promised but didn't use it to get on a bus. Instead, he'd paid for a taxi driver to take him places, including a military surplus store, where he'd purchased a set of handcuffs that were now hidden in his shirt.
His exhaustion was not only physical but also mental. Worry about what had happened to Mack. Worry about Ella. He was free from the island but only physically.
“I need to see my mom,” King told her. “She's in long-term care. Ella King.”
The nurse had a middle-age face that had long set into a permanent expression of disapproval, but it softened for King.
For a moment, he thought she was going to deliver the news he'd been dreading. That was part of the mental exhaustion. Remembering how Mack had said they used Ella's condition as a threat, promising something would go wrong if Mack didn't follow orders. King thought she was about to tell him that it was too late, that Ella King had succumbed to her coma, that Ella was...
“I wish I could break the rules for you,” the nurse said. “But really,
it's only a little more than an hour to wait. We've got kitchen staff going from room to room, and if I break the rules for you, then...”
The nurse gave a helpless shrug.
“Close your eyes, okay?” King said. He wanted to do a happy danceânothing had happened to his mom! Well, not yet. King couldn't wait an hour. Too many bad things could happen.
The nurse didn't close her eyes. She watched as King walked past the desk and down the hall to where his mom was on a bed, connected to the tubes that kept her alive.
The nurse didn't yell after him to stop. King had guessed right.
She
hadn't broken any rules by giving him permission. So if she didn't say anything, she wouldn't get in trouble. She had enough of a heart to want King to be with his mother.
Of course, King thought, if the nurse knew what he intended to do in the room with those handcuffs, that would have been a different story. Lights would be flashing and horns would be blaring and a full team of security guards would be dashing down the hall to stop him.
At the doorway, King paused. He knew the sight of his mom laying there in helplessness would hammer his heart like an anvil thrown against his chest.
And it did.
King set his jaw hard and walked into the room. Ella had lost weight, and her cheekbones pressed against tight skin. He was glad her hair looked nice. Someone had washed it and brushed it. That was a good sign they were taking care of everything. Especially the stuff that mattered. Like turning her over enough to keep her from getting bedsores. Like exercising her legs and arms.
Her breathing was soft as he leaned in to kiss her cheek.
It reminded him of Mack's story about going into the room when King was a baby to listen to King breathe just so he knew King was alive.
King kissed Ella on the cheek and whispered into her ear. “I love you, Mom. Wake up soon, okay?”
He pulled up a chair to a comfortable position near the bed. He noted with satisfaction that the side bar of the hospital bed formed a
railing with a long rectangle. It meant that when he clicked half of the handcuffs around the railing, there was no way to slide them loose.
He locked his wrist into the second half of the handcuffs.
The key was somewhere in a garbage can outside the hospital. Until they brought in a welding unit to cut the side rail of the bed, he was stuck in this room.
King reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out Blake's iPhone. He dialed a number that he'd memorized.
When a woman's voice answered, King said, “Hello. I'd like to speak to Warden Murdoch. Please tell him it's the Lyon King.”
“King,” Murdoch said 30 seconds later, “it's great to hear from you. Things are well?”
