Sean Black - Lockdown

‘So why’d they send you out?’ he asked Ty.

‘Messenger boy.’

‘And what’s the message? What do they want?’

‘A signed undertaking from the President guaranteeing their status as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, along with an undertaking that they won’t be deported. Oh yeah, and a signed picture of Will Smith.’

‘That all, huh?’ Frisk asked.

‘The last part’s negotiable. I think they’d settle for Eddie Murphy at a pinch.’

‘Nice to see you find this all so amusing, but I’m about six levels down from being able to start offering signed executive undertakings.’

‘Then you’d better start moving it up the chain.’

‘Even if we get agreement, they’ll all be going to jail for the rest of their natural lives.’

‘They know that.’

‘OK, I’ll pass it on,’ said Frisk, stepping back out of the Winnebago. ‘But that’s it, right? There’s nothing else.’

‘That’s it.’

Ty watched Frisk exit the trailer. He uncrossed his fingers and let out a sigh. Mareta had had one other demand but Lock had told him not to mention it, although Ty hadn’t needed telling. Soon as he had the all clear, Ty was going to take care of it himself. In fact, he was looking forward to it.

Ty found Carrie among the lines of news trucks which had been pushed to the very edge of a service road. The good news was he was clear of any infection. The bad news was that he was going to have to convince her to assist in something that could see them both spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

As soon as she spotted him, she rushed over. ‘Where’s Ryan? What’s going on in there?’

‘You’re slipping, girl. Aren’t you supposed to reverse the order of those questions? With you being a member of the press ’n’ all.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘He’s inside. I wouldn’t say he’s safe exactly, but he’s in fair shape considering.’

‘Considering what?’

Ty pulled her to the rear of the truck. ‘He needs our help.’

Carrie took a breath and centred herself. ‘OK. What kind of help?’

Ty had already decided to feed it to her piece by piece. ‘You have a car here?’

‘No.’

He produced a set of keys. ‘Damn, have to use Lock’s then.’

‘Ty, what’s going on?’

‘Where’s the dumb dog he left you with?’

‘In the truck, asleep.’

‘We’ll need to take her with us.’

‘Where? Where are we going?’ She glanced back at the news truck. ‘I’m on duty here. I can’t just pick up and leave.’

‘Ryan needs you to do this.’

‘You still haven’t told me what it is he wants me to do. And I’m not going anywhere until you do.’

Ty rested his hand against the spare tyre on the back of the news station’s RV. ‘Second thoughts, we can use this too. Kill two birds with one stone. You can get your story while I make my pick-up.’

‘Are you deaf? I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me why.’

‘Then a lot of people are gonna get killed.’

‘Fine, but you at least have to tell me where we’re going.’

Ty waved over Carrie’s camera guy. ‘Saddle up.’ Then he turned back to Carrie. ‘We’re going to enforce some corporate accountability.’

Mareta watched the dark shapes flitting periodically across the wall of monitors with about as much interest as a retired cop relegated to the graveyard shift at an out-of-town mall. She palmed some painkillers, checked the time-code running at the bottom left of the nearest screen, swivelled on her chair, and shot the guard nearest to her in the face.

Josh stirred in his sleep as Richard handed him to Lock and rushed towards the dying man. A spurt of blood covered Richard’s face — unfair reward for an act of compassion.

Lock put his hand behind Josh’s head and pressed the little boy’s face tight to his chest. Even with children’s seemingly endless capacity for absorption, there were some things better left unseen.

Lock could feel Josh’s arms and legs stiffening as he watched Richard tend to the dying guard. He stretched out as best he could, catching Richard’s eye as he did so.

‘Let the kid go, Mareta. He’s been used enough already.’

‘I won’t harm the boy.’ Mareta paused. ‘So long as my demands are met.’

‘This country doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.’

‘Correction. It’s not seen to. There’s a difference.’

‘Look, you have me, you have him,’ said Lock, indicating Richard.

She swivelled round on the chair, the suddenness of the movement leaving Lock’s heart in his mouth. ‘This situation is not of my making,’ she said.

There was movement outside the control room. One of the detainees, a young Pakistani the others called Khalid, led in three of Meditech’s guards at gunpoint. Their uniforms were torn, and one of the men’s eyes were closing from the beating he’d taken. Mareta buzzed the door open and they were pushed inside, forced to sit on the floor.

‘OK, I make you a deal,’ Mareta said. ‘Once your friend delivers his cargo to us, the boy can leave. But in the meantime, for every hour that passes, one of these men will die.’

Lock knew that arguing would get him nowhere. ‘I already explained to you that this would take at least two hours. The travel time alone will be that, never mind the actual extraction.’

Mareta seemed to mull it over. ‘Then only two of these men will die.’

Two German Shepherds prowled the fence surrounding Nicholas Van Straten’s Shinnecock Bay estate, white teeth bared. Ty reached down into a brown paper bag, came up with half a dozen hamburger patties they’d picked up on the way from a bemused fast-food operative, stepped back and lobbed them over the fence. The dogs sniffed at them suspiciously. Then one of them, presumably the alpha male, cocked his leg and took a leak on them. The other one followed suit a second later.

So the dogs had been trained to eat only what they were given by their owner, usually achieved by a rather crude form of aversion therapy involving beating them with a stick any time they got close to food not delivered by him.

‘Plan B it is then,’ Ty said, walking back to the car. He opened the back door and Angel bounded out.

Carrie followed. ‘Whoa, where are you taking her?’

‘Oldest trick in the book. Don’t worry,’ he said, patting Angel on the head, ‘she likes bad boys.’

Carrie folded her arms. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, she followed Ryan, didn’t she?’

Carrie looked around. ‘I shouldn’t even be here.’

‘Price of getting the scoop of the century.’

He took Angel off her leash and she wandered over to the fence. ‘Go on,’ Ty whispered, before turning back to Carrie. ‘What’s the way to a man’s heart if not through his stomach?’

‘That’s so disgusting.’

‘Hey, it was your boyfriend’s idea, not mine.’

The Shepherds were frantic now, wet black noses pressed against the fence. Bared teeth and barking had given way to quivering tails and yelps of desire. Much to Ty’s relief, Angel reciprocated, seemingly pleased with the attention from not one but two strapping Germans. One of the Shepherds began to paw at the ground near the fence, clods of earth flying up. The other joined it, and soon both dogs were engaged in a race to see who could tunnel their way to Angel first.

It took the two dogs just under ten minutes to dig a hole under the fence big enough so that they could squeeze through to the other side. They didn’t even give Ty or Carrie a second look as they sniffed around Angel.