RATH - Redemption (2 page)

The shore break churned, sending the rising tide to within twenty yards of the dune. She stared out over the infinite body of water that lay before her, focused on a spot just short of where the muted blue tint of the skyline bled into the ocean. The onshore winds pushed in around her, hinting at its salty remains, as the sound of crashing waves battled the winter storm for dominance. Sarah’s teeth began to chatter as she pulled the thick overcoat in tight around her and looked back at the guard who’d already started down the dune toward the door they exited moments before.

Sarah turned to the young man. “What’s your name?”

Without turning he said, “Jonah…”

Shouting over the shore break, Sarah followed the guard down through the powdery sand and grabbed at his left arm. “What are you doing, I thought you were going to help me?”

He instinctively pulled away and kept moving forward. “I’m going to get you out of here; although there are a few things I need to take care of first.”

“Like what?” Sarah asked, stopping him as they reached the door. “Why don’t we just leave? There’s no one out here and I think I’d rather take my chances out on the beach than to go back inside.”

He pointed down the shoreline toward a rock formed jetty and beyond that a massive one hundred-foot yacht. “You see that boat? That belongs to him. Emerson Boothe must have arrived within the last hour and at the very least, he knows we are out here and has already sent the others for us. Worst-case scenario is he turned the cameras back on and is watching us right now. We have to go back inside or neither of us lives to see tomorrow.”

“But—”

Jonah gripped her shoulder, leaned forward, and talked directly into her ear. “We have to go… right now. I’m going to tell them you tried to escape.”

“What?”

“Just listen, once I tell them you have become a problem, they’ll allow me to put you in with that other woman, your friend…Lauren, I believe. Get in the room with her and keep her quiet. I will come back for you both in less than an hour and when I do, you need to be ready to go. Remember to keep her quiet, no exceptions.”

“I will.”

He stepped back, pulled the overcoat away from Sarah, tossed it to the ground and reached for the door handle. For half a second, his advance met resistance, obviously from the opposite side. Repositioning his hand, Jonah tightened his grip, although he lost the battle and the door swung open toward him, sending the young man into the sand and flat on his back. As the cloud of dust began to settle, Sarah turned and ran back toward the beach.

Each step seemed to push deeper into the soft sand and without turning, she knew at least one of the two guards through the door had started after her. Approaching the dune, Sarah could feel the heavy footfalls growing closer as she made her way along the steep incline. Reaching the apex, she was thrown forward, her jaw involuntarily clamped down and the taste of blood filled her mouth. Face first into the sand, Sarah convulsed as she slid to a stop near the bottom of the dune and struggled to pry her twitching eyelids open.

The shouts of three distinctly different voices pulled her back. She felt nauseous and the pounding in her temple was just short of monumental. Her lower back was on fire and as she tried to stand, the searing pain shooting through her lumbar sent her back to horizontal. Rolling to her left, Sarah tore at the landscape, attempting to continue her escape, only to be pulled by the hair and lifted to her knees. Brushing the sand from her eyes and mouth, the scene became clear.

Three men…two dressed in black and a mystery man, much older and at least a half foot shorter than the others. One of the men in black remained at the crest of the dune, the other held tight to Sarah and the mystery man grinned as he shoved a pistol into Jonah’s forehead.

The older man struck Jonah repeatedly with the handle of the weapon and appeared to be enjoying his dominance of the younger man. His posture remained as Jonah crumbled at his feet and the mystery man moved to Sarah. He paused five feet away and spoke to her specifically. “Hello.”

She said nothing.

“Are you ok? Are they treating you fairly?”

Again nothing, she simply stared straight ahead.

The mystery man didn’t flinch. He turned first to the man holding Sarah and then to the other stationed atop the dune. He didn’t speak to them; he only shrugged his shoulders and turned back to her. Leaning forward he continued, “Are you hurt? Can. You. Hear. Me?” In an effort to draw her out, he took extra time annunciating the last four words, knowing full well she heard every last syllable he spouted.

Straightening up, he waited.

A full sixty seconds had passed and she could tell he would wait her out. She had no way of knowing where it would lead and without any additional information, she’d be no closer to finding her husband than she was now. “I don’t care to hear anything you have to say. I only want to get back to my husband and there’s no reason for you to keep me here. If you just let me go, I won’t cause you any trouble.”

“Young lady, do you have any idea who I am and why you’ve been allowed to live?”

“If you are the person responsible for all of this, then I think I know who you are.”

The mystery man turned around and moved back to Jonah, who’d already begun finding his way to his knees and spitting mouthfuls of blood onto the beach. The older man stopped, returned the weapon to Jonah’s forehead and in turning to face Sarah, pulled the trigger. Jonah’s lifeless body went limp and fell headfirst into the sand before her cry pierced the afternoon air.

Continuing to vocalize her anguish, Sarah wasn’t certain which terrified her more…the actions of the mystery man or her own screams. She feared the next body to be discarded at the foot of the dune would be her own, and although she promised herself to fight until the last breath escaped her body, she stood, turned, and ran.

Before she had taken three strides, a single shot was fired. Wide left…although by less than a few feet, Sarah feared the miscue was intentional and the next round to leave the weapon would be less of a warning. She veered right and headed for the rolling shore break as she was once again caught by the swifter and much larger guard dressed in all black. He dragged her back to the others and set her free at the foot of the yet unidentified gunman.

He spoke. “Sarah…yes, I know who you are and I have a feeling you know my name as well. While I’m sure your husband has filled your head with countless stories of what a dreadful human being I’ve become, I can assure you that the truth is much worse than anything he could have ever described.”

“You’re sick,” she said.

“That’s entirely possible,” he said. “Although as you can see by what remains of Jonah here, I don’t take too kindly to those that cross me.”

Sarah purposely didn’t break eye contact with him and although she fought it, a single tear broke free and ran down her left cheek.

He took a step forward, handed the weapon to the man in black and turned to Sarah. He held out his right hand and again smiled. “My name is Emerson Boothe and you’re here because of your husband.”

The terminal, although a colossal three hundred fifty thousand square foot warehouse, closed in around him. He attempted to control his breathing and forced his mind to think through both his words as well as his actions. Rath looked to Vera and although his instinct was telling him to reach out and demonstrate his displeasure to Symon, he simply asked for clarification. “Why is this man here? I’m sure you realize that he attempted to hand me over to Boothe earlier this morning and also what I’m capable of doing to him?”

She shook her head. “Rath, you don’t understand, Symon and his family weren’t stationed in that building to hand you over. I sent them to make sure you made it out of Extinction alive. Boothe’s men were going to find you sooner or later. I wanted to make sure it was later.”

Rath chuckled. “That sounds like a good story, although my gut tells me Symon here has ulterior motives. I think—”

Laying her hand on his shoulder, Vera interrupted, “We really don’t have time for this. Symon is here to help you get back to your wife, and without him it may not be possible, so let’s put the egos aside for a few minutes…shall we gentlemen?”

“How’s he going to help me this time?”

“He’s here to help you convince our only pilot to fly this thing into Boothe’s backyard.”

Symon held out his right hand, eyed Rath, and waited for a reaction. There wasn’t one; Rath continued to look at Vera for some sort of explanation that actually made sense. Too much too fast, nothing seemed to fit, although he reminded himself that his focus needed to remain with her. Sarah was his priority and whatever road took him there, he needed to follow it, even if that meant using Symon as a traveling companion.

Turning to Vera, Rath said, “Okay…let’s go see the pilot.”

As the others turned in the direction of the massive terminal doors, Symon didn’t move. Instead, he continued to hold out his right hand, waiting for Rath to at least acknowledge his gesture. Already beginning to follow the others, Rath paused, moved to Symon and grabbed his hand. He clamped down and contemplated the repercussions of a single left hook to Symon’s rib cage, although he stopped short with only a vague warning. “I’m still not convinced you’re who she thinks you are; you’re gonna have to prove it to me.”

Still grasping Rath’s hand, Symon closed the distance between the two men. “I’m not the one you need to worry about. The man we’re going to see isn’t going to be easy to convince and without my help, this thing never leaves the terminal. If you think I’m being less than truthful, go try and convince him yourself.”

Rath released his grip and moved quickly back to the group, catching Vera and the three men as they advanced toward the opposite end of the warehouse. He stepped between the men flanking Vera and made mental notes of the various items being loaded into the drone, least of which was what appeared to be the extensive armament Emerson Boothe amassed in the many years he spent holed up inside the mountainous cavern. “Why’d Boothe leave all this? Didn’t he feel he’d need it out there?”

Vera stopped. “Boothe took enough of everything he thought he’d need, including weapons. This is what was left over. Also, he only took those who posed little if any threat to his well-being. He figured he’d never need to use them.”

Rath motioned toward the drone. “Is that why he left that behind as well; he thought he wouldn’t have any use for it?”

“No…it was because without BoB, the vessel sitting in this terminal is nothing more than a two hundred thousand pound paper weight. It was useless in his eyes.”

“Bob?” Rath asked.

“Yes,” Vera said. “Every aircraft and ground unit that was operated out of this facility had what was referred to as a B.O.B. or Brain On Board. Each one identical and without a BoB, the unit ceased to function. Each BoB houses a CPU, on-board memory, hard drive, and motherboard. Boothe now knows that a unit is missing and according to one of our men on the inside, is desperate to find it…and you.”

“So he also knows that I walked away with it?”

“He does now.”

“Why’d his men leave the scout drone behind? An error of that magnitude just doesn’t happen by accident.”

Vera shook her head. “Let’s just say, we may have had a hand in scrambling the tracker for the smaller drone, and in turn caused a bit of confusion for Boothe and his men. Before they made their way back to the site, you’d already taken the hardware and left the area.”

“Okay…you and your people are responsible for bringing down that scout drone, but how on earth could you have possibly predicted that I’d bring that device here? There’s no possible way you could have known that.”

“We didn’t. Tyler and Samuel put together the coordinates of where the drone went down and we sent out a small search party, only to come back empty handed. We lost three men to a large pack of Andros at the gates of District Two and I made the call to bring the others back home. We tracked the device from here and once you reached Extinction, we had a pretty good idea of where you were headed.”

Rath nodded toward Symon. “Why not just have him take it from my pack while Chloe and I were out and bring it back to you?”

“We got word that Boothe sent a team to bring you and the unit back to him. Symon would have never made it out of the city with his wife and child in tow. They would have killed him before he reached the foothills. He was a diversion and nothing more. We needed you to—”

Three short cracks and the facility went dark. With no adjacent areas having natural lighting filtering through, the terminal became a prodigious black hole. Next, the familiar sound of the structure’s ventilation system powering down sent a second wave of distress through the already anxious room. His heart pounded in his ears and the knot in his stomach added another layer as Rath reached out, felt for her arm and stepped to Vera’s side.

The silence deafening, as the more than forty individuals occupying the terminal collectively held their breath. Fear hung in the air as Vera calmly made her way to the North wall, assuring that Rath followed and then started for the archway between the two terminals. She whispered in to his ear. “Boothe knows you’re here; I’m guessing he also knows about his son and decided to cut the power remotely. This is his demented version of retaliation.”

Rath pulled her in close. “Is he trying to—?”

“Yes,” Vera said. “He’s attempting to suffocate everyone in this mountain.”