Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) (23 page)

Two nights later, Rick sat in a grassy field just outside the town of Warrenton. He had already checked and re-checked all the components of the hang glider now sitting limply at an angle to his rear. All the rods and wires had been spray-painted a matte black with rustproofing primer and the oncered nylon wing had been blackened with a chemical solution that Eps swore wouldn't weaken the fabric or lower the lift-to-weight ratio.

Rick sincerely hoped his roommates had gotten that right. Enough other untried technology was being used tonight.

There was a new moon, but he could just see the starlight reflecting off the varnished wings of Scott's tiny Fly Baby airplane. Fifty feet of nylon rope ran from the back of the single-seat aircraft to a quick-release clip clamped to the balance point of the hang glider's king post above the wing. A string led down from the clip's release lever through the hole that allowed the king post to pierce the hang glider's wing. A hefty lead fishing weight on the end kept it hanging straight and would, hopefully, prevent it from being blown backward too far for Rick to reach it.

The idea was for the Fly Baby with Scotty at the controls to tow the hang glider up and above the Children's Crusade compound. Once there, Rick would pull the release and fly into the compound, land, unhook, and head for the Big House to find and recover Sage. Rick thought that it was less than a perfect plan, but attempting to crash the front gate had been ruled out by a combination of half-inch cable woven into the chain link gate and some impressive firepower in the hands of the guards.

The next night, Rick had tried going over the back fence where Kristee had made her escape only to be forced back as well. As soon as he reached the top of the fence, electric lights blazed along its length activated by a motion sensor, and he had to drop back into the shrubbery and evade a considerable amount of rifle fire from what appeared to be Crusaders perched on hunter stands up in the trees.

Along with a heavyweight flashlight and a roll of duct tape bungeed to the crossbar, Rick had his Zippo in one pocket of his jeans and a short steel rod threaded through heavy washers and securely bolted with self-locking nuts in the other.

There had been a brief discussion of whether he should carry a pistol or even a rifle, but he had nixed the idea on the grounds that either choice was too heavy for the already-stressed flight characteristics of the hang glider. The real reason was that he simply didn't want to kill any more people, but he kept that to himself, safely locked inside with those whose mutilated faces haunted him every night.

As a compromise, Kristee was tucked behind a fallen tree on the small hill that sat just outside the Crusaders’ property line to the south. This morning, Mrs. Lewitinsky had listened calmly to her story, given her a long hug, and taken her into the bedroom where Kristee had picked out a hunting rifle from the late Mr. Lewitinsky's collection.

They'd consulted a topographic map of the surrounding area, picked out a location, and then she had taken Kristee out to a field far from any neighbors where they worked together to zero the scope for the approximate distance. When they returned to the house, the older woman had handed Kristee a set of keys for the gates on her property and most of her neighbors', kissed her on the forehead, and promised to leave a light on at the back door.

Steve was working at the NSA listening post in West Virginia and simultaneously monitoring almost all the radio and telephone traffic in Northern Virginia.

Irritated and unwilling, Corey Gravelin was sitting in a car just down the street from the local police station. His job was to call in a report of a disturbance at the compound or bail people out, depending on how things went.

Rick had been concerned that, when attacked, the cult would simply grab Sage and disappear, but Eps had assured him that wouldn't happen. When pressed for details, he'd grinned broadly and said, "Once again, you really don't want to know."

Knowing his housemate's penchant for explosives, Rick decided he didn't.

He was startled out of his thoughts when Eve appeared at his side. "Scotty's ready. Are you all set?"

"I'm as ready as possible, considering."

"Good." Eve gave him a passionate kiss, placed her forehead against his, and whispered, "You'd better come out of this alive or I'll come in and kill you myself." She spun and ran off into the darkness.

Rick stood up and lifted the glider into its takeoff position, slightly nose-down to avoid any premature lift. Ahead he could hear the sputter as the 65-horsepower Piper Cub engine came to life. Its rough sound smoothed out quickly as it warmed, and Scotty released the choke.

There was a double flash from the darkness ahead, and Rick reached down, took the flashlight, and signaled back. The tiny plane was never designed for night flights, so it didn't have running lights or an electrical system. Scotty would be flying through the moonless night with only streetlights and a handheld compass for reference. Rick reflected that there wasn't anyone else he'd trust to get him there safely.

Eve, who was the traffic control for their makeshift airport, appeared in front of him; face lit by a flashlight, and gave him the up-down hand thumb signal that meant, "Go? No go?" When he responded with a steady thumbs up, she dashed back into the darkness. Moments later, Rick heard the sound of the airplane engine increase; and, when the sound had built to a throaty growl, he had a second to note the rope straightening in front of him, and then he was running full out across the grass.

Everything was off-kilter. The pull of the rope was all wrong with his weight on the ground instead of suspended from the king post. He had to use the considerable strength in his arms to keep the wing from pitching forward and plowing into the ground.

When he simply couldn't run any faster, he leapt into the air, flopped forward into a prone position, and simultaneously pulled back on the control bar.

Now the pull from the towrope was right on his center of gravity. The wing dipped down until he could feel the tops of the grass blades against his hands and the toes of his boots. It was low, but it was flying.

It might have just been his imagination, but he felt the little airplane in front of him straining for speed. Slowly, painfully slowly, it began to rise.

Suddenly, his wing was buffeting violently. With intense concentration, he forced it into a slight lift. After a couple of minutes that felt like years, the buffeting stopped as he rose above the turbulent air being thrown back by the airplane's propeller. He concentrated on staying in a narrow safe zone between the prop wash below him and going so high that the towrope would begin to catch on the front apex of his kite.

For a time, his mind was entirely focused on maintaining this delicate balance. When he achieved enough control to consider anything but his hands on the control bar, he looked down.

They had gained an amazing, almost frightening, amount of altitude. He could pick out the lights of Virginia highway 334 far below and thought with gratitude that Scotty had nailed their primary navigation beacon. Ahead, the airplane was only a slightly darker bit of sky. The sound of the engine was a steady purr.

Ahead, he saw the spotlights on the orange roof of the roadside Stuckey's that was their final point of reference. Their carefully calculated plan was to make a 30-degree turn to the south directly over the combination candy store and lunch counter and then fly for a steady count of 180 seconds. At this mark, he'd release from the tow cord and bank right and down while Scotty would simultaneously bank to the left and up. Scotty had said "with reasonable luck," they would avoid a mid-air collision.

He counted "one Mississippi, two Mississippi" as they flew away from the highway's lights and into a featureless darkness. Concentrating on keeping the control bar steady with his left hand and the count going at the same time, he reached out with his right hand and—after a few seconds of desperate searching—found the lead weight on the end of the release cord.

He slowly pulled his right hand back to the bar, thinking how all this coordination took patting your head while rubbing your stomach to a whole other level. It might have been a nice thing to practice at least once.

After 180 careful "Mississippis," he pulled gently and then with increasing power on the release cord. Finally, he gave it a hard jerk and felt the snap as the catch released. Without the air speed provided by the towline, he almost instantly went into a low power stall; but he slammed the control bar back against his thighs; and, with a shudder as the rear of the wing almost lost lift, he pulled into a swooping dive that gave him the airspeed to stay aloft.

He could hear Scotty off to his left and wished him luck—he was going to have to land with only Eve's flashlight and three roadside flares to guide him. Then he came up over a hill, and the brightly lit windows of Cloyes' Big House appeared about a mile ahead. It was long after midnight, but the house and the lawns, gardens, and courtyards immediately around it were all visible in pools of white cast by floodlights.

Rick concentrated on picking out a place to land, having to choose between those areas that were too well lit and those where darkness could be hiding trees, rocks, or stone walls. From their study of the available maps, they had decided that somewhere behind the large horse barn was the best of a number of poor choices. There were a number of fences, but it also contained the largest open spaces out of sight of the house.

Squinting to block the light from the house and grounds, Rick worked to pick out the white fences as he descended through the darkness. As he came into the shadow cast by the three-story barn, he could suddenly see a fence running directly across his line of flight. A wrenching turn to the right dumped the air from the wing, and he dropped a couple dozen feet in a sickening lurch.

There wasn't time for conscious thought as he snapped the wing straight and went directly into a dive, pushing out to a landing stall when he was inches off the ground. There was a chorus of startled squeals as he zipped past a group of drowsing horses, causing them to thunder off into the darkness, and then he was bouncing and skidding across the packed earth of the stable yard.

Even before the wing stopped moving, he had snapped the belts that held him and was rolling as far away from the glider as possible. When he stopped, he lay on the ground with his face down in the dirt, listening to the light aluminum and nylon frame bounce and crumple off to his left. When the glider and the frightened horses both settled into silence, he waited, listening intently for a shout of discovery or the patter of approaching footsteps.

The silence settled, and the sound of frogs and crickets returned.

A school bus.

Rick wondered, "What is a school bus doing back here?"

He was prone at the corner of a garage and looking around it to the brightly lit asphalt of the parking area behind the house. An old school bus—muddy brown paint peeling off to reveal the original bright yellow color underneath—was parked next to the back door with the engine idling.

He couldn't see anyone, but that didn't mean there weren't watchers. Most of the windows that lined the three stories of the Big House were dark, and the bright lights of the courtyard meant they were effectively one-way mirrors. Garages, horse stables, other small outbuildings lined two sides of the yard, leaving only the north end to his left open to the darkness of the Virginia night. The bus meant that at least one person was awake, almost certainly more.

Rick squirmed back a few feet on his stomach before rising to his feet in the deep shadow. He had the big D-cell flashlight in his right hand, but he kept the light off as he picked his way slowly around the south side, moving from shadow to shadow and stopping often to listen. He could hear voices from inside the house, but they were too low to tell if they were male or female, child or adult.

A concrete and brick porch followed the sides of the house except the back. Rocking chairs, ceiling fans, and hanging flowers gave it a comfortable feeling that Rick found disturbingly at odds with everything Kristee had told him about what went on there. He avoided the wooden steps where his boots would have made noise, stepping over the railing instead.

As soon as he was on the porch, he turned to the south and blinked the flashlight three times. He knew he wouldn't see anything from Kristee; he could only trust that she now had him in her scope.

The sole window not completely dark along this side of the mansion was toward the front. Glad that the cement floor turned his footsteps into soft scuffs, he moved slowly to the edge of the window and peered inside.

The room was illuminated by overhead lights from what appeared to be the central hall. The spray of light through an archway showed the outsized chairs and side tables of a formal parlor, but there were no lights on and, as far as Rick could see, no inhabitants. He waited for a full count of sixty, looking for anything to change, seeking a watcher in the darkness.

Finally, he moved slowly past two windows and hugged the wall just before the corner of the porch. Slowly kneeling and then prone, he pushed his head along the porch floor. White light spilled from the open front door and fanned onto the neatly trimmed lawn. The voices inside the house were clearer now, the querulous sounds of young girls asking questions being shouted down by the deeper voices of men giving orders. He pulled back, stood up, and turned the corner.

A voice said, "Got you now, motherfucker."

An arm came up and the hand took a firm grip on the back of his neck in a half nelson. There was a multiple snapping sound and a knife swept in from the right and rested on his carotid.

"Not so tough without your flyboy buddy?" It was Flick Crane.

"Why Vernon," Rick said calmly, "this is a pleasant surprise."

"The name is Flick."

"Yeah, whatever." Rick's voice stayed steady as his mind raced. "If my real name was Vernon, I'd change it, too."

The grip on his neck tightened, and Rick could feel the other man's knee moving in to break the stability of his right leg. He was certain he would have to fight; the odds of this dick murdering him were simply too high. He just wanted to learn something first.

"So where is everyone?" he asked. "I thought this place was a 24-hour party."

The knife pressed harder into his neck, and Rick felt a sharp burst of pain. Blood streamed down his neck, but it wasn't the explosive spurts of an arterial bleed. Flick had cut next to the artery, not through. He was clearly planning to enjoy every second of this.

"You won't need to worry about everyone else." The voice in his ear hissed. "But you might as well know that your friends in Lame Deer are going to be dead in just a couple of days. And I'll be fucking that arrogant squaw of yours after I kill your buddies on Ingomar."

"Why'd you kill Gary?" Rick asked. "He seemed like such a loyal Crusader."

"Fuck Gary. I needed him to get the little cunt into the car, but when he heard she was the next in line for Stephen's bed, he started to get crazy. So I wasted his ass just like I'm about to do yours."

The point of the knife moved from Rick's throat to rest just under his right eye. Flick's voice was like a terrible caress. "Right through your eye and into your brain. Bleeding out doesn't fucking hurt much, but a brain shot can leave you screaming on the ground for a long time."

Rick couldn't help it. His neck strained as he tried to pull his head back, involuntarily pulling away from the knife. Was there one more chance to stall, to push for more information, or would that be fatal?

He shrugged.

"It won't matter that much. I'll be dead either way. But do me a favor. Don't let Sage see me, OK?" He could feel Flick's laugh where the man's chest was pressed against his back. "Damn, I'd not only let her see you, I'd make her cut off your dick and eat it."

"But?"

"But Stephen took her with him." The knifepoint was moving slowly, off the skin and over Rick's eye. The light reflected from the front door slashed into his eye.

Rick had gotten the information he needed, and the time for restraint had passed. Rick swung the big flashlight. Flick jerked, but the heavy light went out and flew forward. Rick was throwing away his only weapon

Rick used the split-second it took for his opponent to work this out to slam both hands up to his head, snaking his fingers under the arm holding the knife. In the next instant, Flick jerked the knife inward with all his strength.

Rick watched as the light on the point came toward his eye. Then he threw all the power built from night after night of workouts into his forearms. For a moment, the knife trembled and hung quivering and then it slowly began to move away from Rick's face.

Flick grunted and released his grip on the back of Rick's neck, reaching forward to lock his left fist around the right. Now he had twice the power behind the knife, and Rick knew that he'd never be able to push it away.

He dropped his right hand and drove his elbow into Flick’s side, wrenching his body to put more power behind the blow. Flick stepped back, swiveled, and locked into position to continue the relentless pressure.

For a second, neither man could move. Then, there was a wet pop behind Rick's head, followed a half-second later by the sharp crack of a bullet's sonic wave.

Flick's arms flew away from Rick's face, and the knife spun off into the shadows. Rick turned and tackled Flick, driving his now-limp body back into the darkness in an ungainly waltz before lowering him to the concrete.

Lank hair still covered Flick's head, but the left side was concave, the skull shattered from the eye socket, and his brains sprayed across 10 feet of concrete. It was too dark to see, but Rick could feel that the reaction jet of the bullet's impact had covered his face and left side in blood as well. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and wiped at his face; he wasn't going to get it all off, but he wanted to be sure he could see.

Even though he knew she couldn't see him in the darkness, Rick raised a hand in thanks to Kristee. As he'd hoped, she taken the shot as soon as he'd turned and Flick was motionless, silhouetted against the light.

Without a pause, Rick moved silently to the back of the side porch and jumped to the ground. The gunshot was certain to bring other Crusaders to investigate. He could leave them to Kristee. They wouldn't stay on the well-lit porch long.

More important was what Flick had just told him. Stephen Cloyes had gone to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and taken Sage with him. Since the man had thought Rick was moments from death when he said this, it was probably true.

It raised an entirely new set of problems—how to get to Montana, how to find Sage—but it simplified his immediate situation.

He needed to get out of the compound. Fast.

As he worked his way through the shadows surrounding the rear courtyard, it exploded with activity. Several men came running, brandishing handguns and yelling commands. One ran to the school bus and got into the driver's seat, leaving the door open.

Then, with an armed man in front and one behind, a dozen girls in white nightgowns stumbled out of the back door and into the floodlit courtyard. Rick thought that they looked odd. It wasn't just that they obviously had been awakened and rushed out of the mansion; it seemed they weren't truly paying attention, as if they didn't care what happened to them.

With a shiver he remembered how Kristee had described the girls after they were taken up to the Big House, "…quiet with holes where their eyes used to be."

Rick turned and began running around the mansion. This time, he stayed away from the building and the lights that were beginning to go on inside the first floor windows. When he thought he was in a position where Kristee could see him against the lights, he stopped and waved one arm above his head in a wide circular motion. If she could see him, she would know to begin her slow and careful walk back to Mrs. Lewitinsky's. If not, she would leave just before dawn. That would work, but it would be better if she were available to help plan their next move as soon as possible.

He continued to move through the darkness, stopping when his feet hit the asphalt of the long, sweeping driveway that led to the front gate. He could make out a large tree next to the road and moved to stand behind it just as the headlights of the school bus flared through the darkness.

Staying close to the trunk, he waited until the bus came past—moving slowly on the dark, curving road—then ran up behind and jumped onto the back. His photographic memory placed his left hand on the handle of the rear door and one foot onto the bumper just to the right. He concentrated on pulling sideways on the handle—not down—to keep from opening the door and bent his leg into a painful crouch to keep his head below the bus windows.

It was only a half-mile to the main gate, but with his muscles strained and cramped by the battle to maintain his perch without revealing himself, it seemed far, far longer. Finally, the bus stopped, and he heard the call and response between the driver and the guards at the gate and heard the rattle and squeal as the chains were removed and the gate swung open.

The driver ground the bus into first gear and began to pick up speed.

A moving light appeared in front of the bus. Rick couldn't see what caused it because it was coming from directly ahead of the bus, but it cast long shadows that whipped away in both directions. With a loud, metallic crash the bus stopped, the tires squealing as it slid in a slight diagonal, bumping up against the brick edge of the gate.

Rick jumped down and moved to the right away from the driver. Looking along the side of the immobile vehicle, he saw a single guard in front of him, rubbing his eyes, and shaking his head. Rick hoped this meant the intense light had momentarily blinded him. He pulled the rod with its heavy washers from his back pocket.

Staying on the grass next to the road, he came up behind the guard, grabbed his right arm with his left hand, and slammed the rod into the elbow. As the man shouted in pain and dropped a pistol from his now-limp arm, Rick moved around the man's left side, grabbed a handful of his long hair, and stepped forward, slamming the guard’s face hard into the metal side of the bus. When he released his grip, the man slumped to the ground, moaning softly.

Rick jammed the steel rod under the rubber bottom edge of the folding bus door. He drove it in until the washers caught on the bottom step, lifting and jamming the mechanism. That should hold the girls until the cops arrived, Then, he ran into the darkness, his back tingling as he expected a bullet any second.

When he was far enough away to feel relatively safe, he slowed and moved back toward the road. In the starlight, he could make out the long shape of the Impala SS. He intentionally scuffed his feet slightly as he came up to alert the driver. The passenger side door opened, and Eps said, "Need a lift, sailor?"

Rick slid in and closed the door. "Let's move."

The big convertible slid into the darkness with the lights off. Rick looked back. "What the hell did you hit that bus with?"

"A bazooka."

Rick felt anger surge in his head, "What the fuck were you thinking? There were kids on that bus!"

Eps flicked on the headlights and accelerated. "Be cool, man. You can't buy a real bazooka in this country." He glanced sideways and said, "But you can mail order a really sweet training model that has everything but the explosive payload. I just put about five pounds of steel through the radiator and right into the engine block."

The redhead looked into the rear-view mirror. "Admittedly, an explosion would have been cool but, as you've so succinctly pointed out, I didn't want to hurt anyone. It's all good; finally seeing that rocket go was so cool."

"Finally? You mean you hadn't tested it?"

Eps glanced to the left, and suddenly the acceleration of the big V8 engine pressed Rick back into the cracked leather seat. "Those things are expensive. I fired into one of those 8-foot concrete pillars that hold up I-95. It dug about six inches into solid concrete exactly where I'd aimed it, so I figured the second round would do the job on the cheap steel in one of those GMC engines."