Patrick Lee - Ghost Country

Now he tried to call it back, because something told him it was important, after all.

What'd Finn said?

He thought about it.

Seconds passed.

He remembered.

"Holy shit," Travis said.

Paige stirred in his arms, tilted her head back to meet his eyes.

"What?" she said.

For a long moment he couldn't answer. He was thinking back over every aspect of the past two days, seeing it all as it'd really been. Seeing what everything meant. It was like watching a film of a shattering wineglass being run in reverse. Every jagged piece of the thing twisting and tumbling, pulled inward toward its proper place by some logical gravity. From the first moment they'd looked through the iris, they'd been wrong about what they were seeing. Their biggest mistake had been right there at the outset, and every conclusion they'd built on it had been way off the mark.

"Travis, what is it?"

He blinked. Looked at her.

"I'll show you," he said.

And then against his every inclination, he let go of her and stood from the couch. He waited for her to get up, and they crossed the living room to the hallway and then the den.

Loose paper files were stacked everywhere in the room-on the desk, the coffee table, the chairs, the floor-in some kind of improvised Dewey decimal system.

"We've narrowed it to five people we're certain we trust," Garner said. "I've e-mailed them and set up a secure conference call-"

He cut himself off, having glanced up and seen Travis's expression.

Bethany looked up too.

They stared. Waited for Travis to speak.

But he didn't. Instead he made his way through the stacked files to the giant globe by the window. He knelt before it and rotated it until he was looking at the United States.

"Where could they go?" he said, more to himself than the others. "Where's the best place for it?"

At the edge of his vision he saw the others trading looks.

He rolled the globe upward, pulling South America fully into view.

"Anyone know a place almost as dry as Yuma?" he said. "Maybe in Central or South America?"

Garner chuckled. "I know a place that makes Yuma look like Seattle. NASA uses it to test Mars rovers. Every year I was in office they wanted more money for research sites down there."

Travis waited for him to go on.

"The Atacama Desert," Garner said. "Northern stretch of Chile. Great big sweeps of it have had no observed rainfall in recorded history. Those parts are biologically sterile. No plants or animals. Not even bacteria."

Travis leaned closer to the globe. Only three of Chile's cities were labeled on it. One was the capital, Santiago. He hardly noticed it. His gaze had already locked onto one of the other two.

The last shard of the wineglass slipped into place.

"Unbelievable," Travis said.

But before he could say more, the stacked papers in the room began to scatter. A cold breeze had blown in from the hall.

It was over before they could make any move. Just like that, there were men in the doorway-two standing and one crouched between them-with silencer-equipped pistols leveled. No one even spoke. There was no need.

The gunmen motioned for them to exit the den, and pulled back from the doorway to make room. Garner led the way, and a moment later everyone was standing in the living room.

There were six gunmen in all. Each had the same weapon: a Beretta 92F with a silencer that nearly doubled its length. There were narrow LED flashlights mounted atop each gun, switched off at the moment. Each of the men also wore a FLIR headset, identical to what they'd had in Yuma, though at the moment they hung from their necks on elongated straps.

Finn was there too. Holding both cylinders. Behind him, the disconnected iris from his own cylinder was still open. Moist October wind blew in from the pitch-black New York on the other side. Then the iris closed and the air stabilized again.

Bethany's backpack, with the SIG inside, still lay where Travis had set it near the couch. He didn't look at it. Just got a sense of it, and judged the distance to it. It wasn't an option at the moment. It would take an ice age to reach it, and another ice age to unzip the pack. Time enough for every weapon in the room to acquire him and hit him half a dozen times.

Finn pointed to a bare stretch of wall. "There. All four of you."

They hesitated, but only for a moment. There was no other move they could make. The geometry of the situation was what it was. They went to the wall. Stood there in a row, facing the room. The gunmen arranged themselves in a broad arc before the four of them, no shooter in any other's line of fire.

"I need all of you to understand that the following isn't bluster," Finn said. "If you give us a reason to start shooting, we're just going to kill all four of you. We can do that and still get away, and each of you knows it. Clear so far?"

None of them answered, even with a nod.

Finn shrugged, took it as an affirmative. Then he set the cylinders in one of the big leather chairs, strode to the hall and disappeared into the den. Twenty seconds passed. They heard keystrokes and a few mouse clicks. Travis pictured the computer screen as it'd been when they left the room. Garner's e-mail program was open, all passwords already entered. Finn could access everything.

They heard him curse softly, and a second later he came back out, holding the cordless phone from the cradle on the computer desk. He looked at Garner.

"The e-mail you sent to coordinate the conference call mentions me by name."

"Does it?" Garner said.

Finn stared at him for a long time, then turned and looked at nothing, and Travis could see him putting together the implications. He didn't look happy about them. He glanced at his watch.

"The call starts in six minutes," Finn said. He looked at Garner again. "When it does, you're going to join it and tell everyone to disregard the message you sent them. Tell them the situation is already being handled higher up, and not to worry about it."

Garner didn't reply. Five seconds passed.

"Do you understand?" Finn said.

Garner exhaled, the sound almost a laugh. "If you think I'm going to do that just because you say so, you're high. Go ahead and shoot us. I'm sure the five people on that conference call, and all their secretaries and staffs, won't think it's the least bit suspicious when they read that I got killed a few minutes before it was scheduled to happen. I'm sure your name being in the e-mail won't bring any unwanted attention onto you, either."

Finn didn't blink, but his eyes drew a third of the way closed. He was thinking again. Visualizing moves and countermoves on the chessboard.

Then he nodded. "Fair enough."

He looked at Garner's phone and punched in a number. Put it to his ear. Waited. When the other party answered, Finn said, "We're here," and described the situation regarding the conference call. He wandered away down the hall as he spoke. Travis heard him say, "No, the e-mail doesn't go into detail, but it names both you and me, which isn't helpful." The conversation continued in low tones Travis couldn't make out.

The nearby wall clock showed four minutes left before the conference call.

Finn came back into the room. He was holding the phone down away from his ear now. Its power light was still on. He looked at Garner.

"It's on speaker," Finn said, and then spoke toward the phone's mouthpiece. "Go ahead."

A man on the phone cleared his throat softly. Even by that sound Travis recognized his voice.

"President Garner," the man said.

"President Currey," Garner said.

Travis heard Currey exhale. He sounded tired. "Rich, what are you trying to do?"

"I'd like to hear your own answer to that question."