Patrick Lee - The Breach

Ellis went to his computer, switched it on, and paced while it powered up.

At the back corner of the desk were two framed photos: Lauren, and Ellis's wife. Karl had seen no evidence of the wife's presence in this house. The information provided by his superiors had indicated trouble in the marriage.

Karl reached deep inside the overlap of the suit and took hold of what he'd found in Ellis's nightstand.

Icons bloomed on the computer screen.

Ellis sat in his chair.

Karl drew the chrome-plated.45, put it to Ellis's temple and fired.

Immediately came shouts from security outside the house. Screams, too, from Lauren's room. Seconds left to finish the job.

Karl lifted Ellis's hand, wrapped the man's fingers around the pistol grip, and fired again, this time into the framed photo of Mrs. Cook. Powder burns now assured, he let both the hand and the pistol fall free. Not two seconds later the bedroom door broke in, almost off its hinges, and four security men were in the room, MP5s shouldered and covering all angles.

"Room clear."

Two broke formation, one to the master bath and another to the enormous closet.

"Bathroom clear."

"Closet clear."

Karl chose the broadest stretch of the wall, far out of the way, and simply stood. Outside in the hallway, other security men were holding Lauren back as she screamed and demanded answers. The men in the room spoke over headsets with other teams outside, locking down the grounds, though a certain calm had descended in their eyes. They could see what had happened.

Watching from the perimeter of the chaos, Karl felt his cell phone vibrate. He was expected to answer under all but the most unforgiving circumstances. These qualified.

Ten minutes later, in the lull between the security response and the arrival of local police, Karl went to the balcony, slipped over the rail and dropped to the patio. He saw two security officers just inside the living room-one of them a woman-sitting with Lauren, holding on to her and speaking softly.

He went to the far end of the patio, where a six-foot drop put him on a gentle slope to the beach.

A quarter mile up the shore road he found an empty bench, and sat. He took out his cell phone and, as expected, found a text message. RETURN TO AIRPORT, NUL CURRENT JOB IF NECESSARY. TAKE UNITED 820 TO CHICAGO, THEN UNITED 71 TO FAIRBANKS, AK. WEAPONS/INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE WAITING IN YELLOW LAND ROVER W/GREENPEACE STICKER, LONG-TERM PARKING D. THIS WILL BE DIRECT AGGRESSION AGAINST TANGENT PERSONNEL.

Even after the sound of the helicopter faded, Travis watched the ridgeline through the cedar boughs for ten minutes. The way ahead, visible from this rise, stood bare and shadowless for more than two miles. Getting caught in the open would be suicide.

The going had been as rough as he'd expected. Five times now, in just over twelve hours, the chopper had come hunting the valleys for them, making slow and methodical passes or simply stopping to hover for minutes on end. Concealment had been sparse but always reachable within the short warning time provided by the incoming rotors, echoing among the peaks.

They'd reached these cedars by the breadth of a wish, Travis setting Paige deep beneath the branches and pulling his own limbs under just as the aircraft rounded the nearest bend in the valley.

Now the silence felt sturdy again. As sturdy as it was going to get, at least.

Paige had drifted off-had barely been awake to begin with, in fact, even when the drumbeat of the blades had passed within a hundred feet. She was in bad shape and getting worse by the hour. The skin around the fissure in her upper arm had grown angry red, and the infected tissue inside appeared to have tripled its presence since Travis had first seen it. Most frightening of all, the veins visible in her forearm had distended and darkened, at least some aspect of the infection spreading that far. And that was only where he could see it. Where else was it branching to?

His first-aid kit might as well have been a make-believe set for a toddler playing nurse. It had nothing that could deal with this injury, though he'd tried the spray can of bactine anyway, with her assent. The only clear result had been searing pain, which she'd tried her best to hide from him. She'd failed-you could only blink away so many tears.

By the time they'd ditched the ATV in the river-after skirting the bank for miles to find a stretch of rapids foamy enough to conceal it-Paige was running a high temperature and unable to stay conscious for any real amount of time. So Travis had dumped his eighty-pound backpack into the rapids as well-keeping only the smallest water pouch-and carried her.

It was harder than he'd supposed it would be. She weighed maybe forty pounds more than the pack, and she hadn't been designed by North Face to distribute the load to his frame. Uphill distances became leg-press workouts. Downhill was worse, every step compressing his ankle and threatening to roll it over into a sprain. Which, in a roundabout way, he realized, would amount to a fatal injury. For both of them.

It helped to consider what Paige had gone through these past three days. All his discomfort was a shin-bump against a coffee table by comparison.

He lifted her carefully now from beneath the cedar. Her eyes opened for a second but didn't focus on him. He wanted to believe that her catatonia was mostly a result of the drug and the sleep deprivation, but had to accept that the infection's role was considerable, and growing. Her forehead beaded like a windshield in rain.

He left the cedar stand and got moving, pushing the pace faster now than at any time before. The open space ahead was the physical distillation of anxiety itself. He imagined that this was how agoraphobics felt in shopping malls. Like prey.

There was no reason to think the chopper might be friendly. Had Paige's people somehow located the wreck, they'd have shown up in greater numbers: fighters overhead, and multiple helicopters offloading personnel along every ridge for miles. It would have been the confident presence of a force on its home soil.

This lone chopper was more like a prowler in someone's house.

Ahead, the valley curved gradually, revealing that the open space continued farther than he'd seen at first. He'd hiked this route on his way in, but couldn't recall the specific layout of tree cover.

He recognized the high, rocky crest on which he'd seen the Dall sheep, his first night in the park. At that time he'd been a few miles east of it, on the Coldfoot side; he was far west of it now, still deep in the range. Adding up the rough distances, and considering his speed-slower than he'd traveled with just the pack, despite the urgency pushing him now-he put Coldfoot at least another twenty hours away.

He wouldn't sleep, of course. Paige would live or die based on how soon she received treatment for the infection. Hours would count. As he walked, he thought of what she'd told him in the clearing.

Tangent. The Breach. The Whisper.

He had in his pocket the piece of clear plastic he'd retrieved from the dead ATV riders. The Whisper's key. What exactly would the Whisper do, when its key was applied? Paige's words came back to him:

We didn't build this thing.

We as in people.

The implications were hard to get his mind around, and not because he didn't believe her. Just the opposite.

Paige interrupted his thoughts, murmuring something in her sleep. No words-just a scared sound, miserable and pleading. It lasted only a few seconds, and then she was quiet again, though Travis felt the tension in her muscles linger, and saw her eyes flitting back and forth behind their closed lids. He wondered how long it would be before she could dream anything other than nightmares.