Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

“Is that where he slept the last time he was here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind if we have a look?”

She rose and led them down the hall.

It was the faded room of a teenager from years ago. Old movie and music posters. Pictures of athletes from fifteen years past. A small gunmetal desk with a dusty PlayStation console and a pair of headphones. Some dog-eared Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels along with books of a technical nature were lined up on a small bookshelf. The bed was a twin and neatly made. The carpet was old and stained.

Decker and Jamison stood in the center of the small space and looked around, while Purdy remained in the doorway blinking away tears.

“I come in here sometimes and sit on his bed,” she said, staring at it. “He’s thirty now. Enlisted right out of high school. Time goes by so fast. Hard to believe. Seems like I just came home from the hospital with him.”

“Did he have a computer?” asked Jamison.

“One of them laptops. But he took that with him. We don’t get real good whatever-it’s-called, out here.”

“Internet connection? Broadband?” said Jamison.

“Yeah. He would always complain about that. But what can you do? Couldn’t up and move the dang farm.”

Decker opened the closet door and peered inside it. There were a few clothes on hangers. He went through the pockets. On the floor was a cardboard box. He pulled it out and set it on the bed. Inside were some books, magazines, and some loose printed pages. Decker looked at the books and magazines and ran his gaze over the pages. The books and magazines all dealt with technical subjects, mostly having to do with electronic communication applications. The loose pages were about various military installations in Maryland, Colorado, Arkansas, and California. Decker held them up. “Any idea why he was interested in these places?”

Purdy came forward and took the pages from him. “I don’t know. Maybe he was thinking about asking for a transfer there.”

“But they’re not all Air Force installations.”

Jamison said, “Or they could be from when he was thinking about enlisting years ago. He might not have settled on a service branch yet.”

“No,” said Decker, shaking his head. “There’s a time stamp at the bottom right of the page. It shows when it was printed out.”

Jamison looked at the dates. “About a year ago,” she said, giving him a confused look.

“You mind if we take these?” he asked Purdy.

“No, help yourself.”

They went back into the kitchen.

Purdy said, “Do you think I’ll see my son again?”

“I wish I could give you a straight answer on that, ma’am. I can tell you that we’ll do all in our power to find him.”

She put a hand on Decker’s arm. “Thank you for that.”

They took their leave and drove off, with Purdy in the doorway of the little house staring forlornly after them.

“I can’t imagine what she’s going through,” said Jamison. “Her only kid is missing and obviously involved in some dangerous things.”

Decker wasn’t listening. He was staring down at the pages he had taken, lost in thought.

Halfway through the trip it was well dark. They had just crossed back over into North Dakota when Jamison glanced in the rearview mirror. “Well, that’s the first pair of headlights I’ve seen in a long time.”

Decker looked in the side mirror and sat up straighter.

“Brace, Alex,” he called out, right as the front of the vehicle trailing them plowed into the rear of theirs.

The collision slammed both of them back against their seats, momentarily stunning them.

Then Jamison went into action. She floored the gas, and the SUV leapt forward.

“Can you see anything?” she called out.

Decker turned around and looked at the headlights a few feet behind them. “Yeah, and here they come again.”

They were bucked forward once more with a second collision. Jamison was having to struggle mightily just to keep the truck on the road.

She said, “They have more horsepower than we do. I’ve got the pedal to the floor.”

“Well, let’s see if we can do something about that.”

Decker undid his seat harness, climbed over the seats, and settled in the cargo area at the back. “Pop the window,” he called out as he slid his Glock from its belt holster.

Jamison did so and Decker edged the glass further up.

He used the back of the cargo door as his fulcrum, aimed, and fired five shots into the driver’s side of the windshield.

The vehicle immediately started to veer erratically to the left and right.

“Think I hit the driver,” he yelled out. As he said this he ducked down. “Look out, Alex!”

Their SUV was strafed with machine-gun fire.

She bent low, cut the wheel hard to the left, and shot onto the wrong side of the road.

“Decker, Decker, you okay? Decker.”

She glanced frantically in the rearview mirror. “Amos!”

His head poked up into view. “Okay, that was a little closer than I would have liked.”

Their SUV started wobbling badly and Jamison said, “They hit our tires. I can’t hold this speed.”

Decker looked to the right. “Road coming up. Take it.”

Jamison left rubber on the road as she drilled a ninety-degree turn onto another ribbon of asphalt heading south. She eased up on the gas because the SUV was fishtailing so badly. “They must have shredded our rear tires. Feels like we’re riding on the rims.”

“Just keep going.”

He watched as the shot-up vehicle, now revealed as a Hummer, made the turn. And then he watched with a sickening feeling as another Hummer pulled in right behind the first one.

They had reinforcements and machine guns. This would not be a long or fair fight.

He looked toward the front of their SUV and saw what looked to be an abandoned farmhouse with broken corral fencing and a hay barn with rotted doors swinging off.

“Head for that barn,” he told Jamison.

The SUV shot through the opening and she slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a stop right before they crashed into the opposite wall. They scrambled out of the SUV and took up position behind their vehicle.

Decker has already tried to call 911 for help, but there were no bars on his phone. Even if he had, it would probably take hours for even a single cop to show up out here.

Jamison had her gun pointed at the open doors. She glanced at Decker. “What now?”

He was eyeing the interior of the barn, and then his gaze went up. “High ground is the best.”

They hustled to an old wooden ladder and clambered up to the hayloft, which was half full of thoroughly rotted straw.

Decker tested each floorboard with his weight before edging over to the hayloft doors and opening them just a crack.

Twin pairs of headlights were cutting through the darkness around the farmyard. The doors of the Hummer with the cracked windshield opened and four men climbed out. They wore all black, including ski masks, and carried automatic weapons. The doors of the second Hummer opened and three more men got out. In the blink of an eye they fanned out, and within seconds they had the barn surrounded.

Decker turned back to Jamison. “Well, our options seem limited.”

“Yeah, as in zero,” she replied grimly.

Decker reached into his pocket and pulled out the device Robie had given him.

Jamison noted this and said, “Little late for that.”

“I was thinking the same thing but what do we have to lose now?”

The shots outside drew their attention back to the hayloft doors.

As they watched, the lead Hummer exploded and the detonation lifted the multiton vehicle straight up into the air before it slammed back down to earth, a collision that burst all four tires.