Patrick Lee - Ghost Country

Finn threw himself flat and crawled behind the couch, for whatever cover it could provide. He heard the SIG fire dry, and it crossed his mind to get up and hit the off button on the cylinder, but already he heard the metallic scrape of the SIG's magazine dropping out, and almost on top of it came the smack of a fresh one being rammed home. Half a breath after that the shooting started again, fast and wild, hitting everything. Finn counted seven shots. Then silence. Which was strange: a SIG 220's clip held eight rounds. He glanced up and saw Kaglan struggling to move, blood seeping heavily from a wound in his side. And then the eighth shot hit Kaglan in the temple and took the top half of his head off.

Finn vaulted to his feet and threw himself toward the walnut table and the black cylinder. The reload would have to be slower this time-the shooter would have to fish in his pockets for another magazine, if he had one. In the split-second before he slammed his thumb down onto the off button, Finn raised his eyes and caught a glimpse of the opening. The shooter had stepped aside again, but the woman, Paige Campbell, was just visible, crouching low on the narrow beam. Her eyes found Finn's at the exact instant he hit the button, and as the circle shrank to nothing, the last thing he saw through it was her hand coming up-and giving him the finger.

They ran until they reached the skeleton of the Ritz-Carlton. They stopped then, and turned, and the three of them watched the avenue to the south. Watched the framework of the high-rise, what they could see of it past the birches. Watched for the telltale burst of sunlight that would give away the opening of the other iris-from the cylinder Finn still possessed. It never came.

They climbed the oak to the Ritz's third floor girders. Bethany switched on their own cylinder, and thirty seconds later they were inside the hotel room, in the present, standing at the windows and looking south at the high-rise in the summer sun.

No unusual activity there. No one rushing in or out. No police response. Travis wasn't surprised-dialing 9-1-1 was probably not the standard procedure for emergencies in that building.

He saw Paige turn toward him. He looked at her. They were both still catching their breath from the run. Travis saw some kind of conflict in her expression. Like part of her couldn't believe what'd just happened, and another part wasn't surprised at all. After a second she just shook her head. She put one arm over Bethany's shoulder, the other over Travis's, dragged them together and squeezed them tightly. They stood that way, saying nothing, for over a minute. P aige used Bethany's phone, encrypted against a physical trace, to call Border Town. She set it to speaker mode. A woman answered on the second ring.

"Bethany?"

"It's Paige, Evelyn."

Travis heard a sharp exhalation on the other end, a mix of surprise and relief. Then a silence.

"Are the others with you?" Evelyn said.

Paige closed her eyes. "No. They're gone."

The line stayed quiet for several seconds.

"Bethany told me there's a blockade in effect around Border Town," Paige said.

"Yes. Fighter jets. So far they're staying outside the boundary."

"Has there been any contact from the president?"

"No. No contact from anyone."

Paige thought about it. Nodded to herself. "All right."

"What's happening, Paige? What's all this about?"

"I wish I had time to explain it, but I just don't. I need to go somewhere. When this is over with, I'll tell you everything."

"One question, then," Evelyn said.

"Sure."

"If there's a move against us by the military, and we can't stop it… do you want us to use the fallback option?"

Paige breathed out slowly. She paced a few steps.

Travis looked at Bethany and spoke quietly. "Fallback option?"

Bethany could only shrug.

Paige stopped pacing. "No," she said. "Not if it's the U.S. military. Do not use the fallback option."

"I understand," Evelyn said. Travis thought he heard another note of relief in her voice.

"Tell everyone to sit tight," Paige said. "We'll talk soon."

She ended the call. Turned to Travis and Bethany. "We need to get moving, fast."

"Where to?" Travis said.

"Yuma, Arizona. I'll explain at the airport." T hey packed in less than three minutes. Travis broke down the shotgun just enough to fit it back into the duffel bag, along with the manila rope. They stowed the cylinder in Bethany's backpack and left the hotel without bothering to check out.

They hit a shop on 14th Street, where Paige bought a pair of jeans and a T-shirt to replace her outfit, which still smelled like gasoline from the motorcade attack. She changed in the restroom. Travis had a cab waiting when she came outside.

"Reagan or Dulles," Travis said.

"Baltimore International, in case they're watching both of those. We need to be paranoid at every step from now on."

She ducked into the backseat, followed by Bethany and then Travis. N one of them spoke during the forty-minute cab ride. Travis glanced across Bethany at Paige a few times. The hug in the hotel room had been a nice enough icebreaker, but there was still a tension that couldn't be helped-and wouldn't be. He had no plan to bring up anything that'd happened between them, including his departure. Neither did she, in all likelihood. And that would be fine. When this was over, he'd go back to sitting on loading docks at two in the morning and trying not to remember her. He'd just be starting from scratch, that was all.

They got out of the cab in front of the private terminal in Baltimore. They headed for the building, set back thirty yards from the drop-off lane.

"We're done with Renee Turner," Bethany said. "After what just happened in the green building, her travel pattern is too easy to zero. These people have Homeland resources at their fingertips. They can look at the timing of our attack on them, then pull up travel and lodging patterns in a radius and interval around it. They'll see Renee's check-in at the Ritz, and they'll see that she flew from Rapid City last night, just over the state line from Border Town. Taken all together, it's enough to smoke us. Renee shows ID here, the ticket agent gets a red pop-up window on her screen. We get a polite smile, and thirty seconds later we get arrested."

She thought about it as they walked. Glanced at Travis.

"Rob Pullman's a different story," she said. "They have no travel or lodging records for him. They have nothing that ties him to Renee, either. Her stopover in Atlanta can't link the two of them. Rob Pullman didn't show ID to board the flight. The only thing his name is on is a credit-card transaction: he bought a shotgun and some climbing rope in Virginia. But so what? That's a single purchase out of 10 million that happened around D.C. this morning. It's one point in the cloud. It's nothing." She looked at Paige. "Can our friends in the office building guess we're going to Yuma?"

"They can assume it."

Bethany thought it over. "Okay. If Rob Pullman flies from Baltimore to Yuma, it's almost unthinkable that their algorithms will flag it. And if he flies into the next town over from Yuma, there's not a chance." She took out her phone. "Rob's gonna need a membership with Falcon Jet."

Paige glanced at Travis. She managed a passing smile. "He'll need a better job to swing it."

"I get double time on Sundays," Travis said.

"I'll give him an oil tycoon uncle whose cholesterol intake caught up with him last spring," Bethany said.

"While you're at it," Travis said, "give him an encounter with Renee on a park bench." R ob Pullman booked a private flight to Imperial, California, fifty miles west of Yuma. The ticket agent smiled politely, but nobody showed up to arrest them. The agent said the plane would be ready in forty-five minutes. They found an outdoor food court that was all but deserted, and ordered lunch.