J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

“Stay here ‘til somebody comes for ya,” he called down the stairway. He turned without waiting for a reply and closed the door behind him. Jen heard the snick of the lock as he closed the door.

“Another adventure?” Mark asked, giving her a reassuring smile.

Jen squeezed his hand, then eased herself down into one of the folding chairs. “Another adventure.”

Jiminez watched the feed from the surveillance camera up the block from the old service station. The van had been inside for about ten minutes before the door slid back up and it backed out again.

“That the place that guy told us about?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sadana replied. She ran a hand through her dark hair to push it back from her face. “Watch when he gets to the corner.”

As they watched, Ramon stopped his van at the next intersection and flashed its lights.

“Bingo,” Schmidt said.

“Mark that place as Target One,” Jiminez ordered, “and pick up the nurse before he gets on the freeway.”

“Yes,” Sadana said again. “Already on it.” Her fingers raced across her keyboard as she sent orders to the teams they had positioned earlier that day.

A moment later, Sadana gave a whoop of satisfaction as text started scrolling in one of the windows on her screen. Jiminez looked at her questioningly.

“It’s just like the informant said,” she explained. “Two minutes after the van left, somebody posted that Jim and Sally had twins.”

Jiminez nodded and cracked a smile. “Good,” he said. “Then we know how they’re communicating. Tell those dickheads down in Santa Clara to get off their asses. I want to know the real names of everyone who’s in that chat room.”

Jen and Mark sat in the basement for what seemed like a long time. Without their phones, they had no way of knowing how much time passed before they heard the garage door cycle again. A moment later, a thin woman wearing jeans and a flannel shirt carefully made her way down the creaky steps.

“You the ones I’m supposed to pick up?” she asked in a flat tone. Her hair was almost as short as Mark’s, and her dark eyes flicked between them suspiciously.

“I guess,” Mark replied. “Nobody else’s come down here.”

“Get your stuff and put it in the back of the truck,” the woman said. “No talking until we’re out of town.”

Jiminez watched as an old pick-up pulled out of the garage and headed off into the night. The view on his screen switched between surveillance cameras until the truck passed the last checkpoint in the capitol district.

He looked over at Sadana and snapped, “Did the Chinks come through with that drone or what?”

“It’s on station,” she said. “I can tell them to follow the truck for us, but we didn’t pay for video.”

Jiminez swore under his breath. “Fine, tell them to let us know where it is every ten minutes. I want to know every time it stops.”

Sadana nodded and typed into the chat window to the operations center at the airbase in Fairfield.

“That chat room lit up a few minutes ago,” she said.

“What about?

“Something about nobody knowing that Jimmy and Sally were expecting.”

Jiminez frowned at that. “Shit,” he spat. “They might waste those two just to protect the network.”

“We’ll at least get the garage,” Schmidt, who sat to his left, said.

“Yeah, better than nothing, I suppose. Let me know what you get from the Chinese. I’m gonna go piss.”

Jen and Mark lay in the bed of the truck. The woman had given them a small, dim lantern before closing the hard-shell cover like a coffin lid. A dirty foam mattress saved them from the worst of the bumps, but Jen’s shoulder and back screamed at her every time she slid against the front of the small compartment.

She must have drifted off, because the next thing they knew, she heard the squeak of gravel on the tire next to her head and felt herself being pulled toward the tailgate. Rocks kicked up by the tires sounded like gunshots against the bottom of the bed after the monotonous hum of pavement underneath them.

“Where are we?” she mumbled.

“Don’t know, sweetie,” Mark replied sleepily. “The mountains, I guess.” They jounced around for a long time, then Jen felt them take several sharp turns. Finally, they came to a halt.

“The operator at Travis says they’ve stopped about twenty miles northwest of Placerville,” Sadana said to Jiminez. “They’re sending over screen caps in a few, but I’ve got old imagery that shows a hunting lodge or something near there.”

“All right,” Jiminez said. “Mark that as Target Two. How far out is Jackson and his team?”

Sadana looked at the tracker on the map in front of her.

“Should be in Placerville in about fifteen minutes,” Schmidt replied. “We’ve kept them back so they wouldn’t be spotted.”

Jiminez let out a long breath, then nodded. “Good. We’ll see what these pendejos do, then send Jackson in.”

Mark and Jen heard and felt the truck’s door open, then close quietly. They sat in silence for a long while, then Jen heard someone opening the cover above them. The tailgate opened with a groan, letting in a wave of frigid air, then a bright, white light shone on them.

“Who’re you?” a man’s voice growled quietly. The speaker’s breath created a fog that rolled through the beam of the flashlight.

“I’m Mark Costa,” Mark said as he sat up with a hand extended to shield his eyes. “This is Jen.”

The yawning muzzle of a shotgun appeared in front of the light. “Wasn’t nobody supposed to be coming up here tonight. All we know is that somebody dropped you off at the garage.”

“Our friend, Ramon,” Jen started to say, “he…”

“Shut up,” the voice barked. The gun jerked to the right a few inches, casting long shadows across Jennifer’s face. “Get out, both of you.”

Mark helped Jen sit up, then they both eased to the rear of the truck and stepped down. Packed snow crunched underneath their feet.

“Get on your knees.”

“My wife, she’s…” Mark started to say, then stopped when something metallic clicked in the cold darkness behind him.

“Man said to get down, so get down,” the woman who had driven them from Sacramento said menacingly. Mark reached over and helped Jen down to her knees.

A third set of hands roughly searched Jen, then Mark. They heard zippers opening from the bed of the truck as someone searched their bags.

“Clean over here,” the woman called out.

“They’re clean too,” the man who had searched them added. His voice was not quite as deep as that of the man holding the gun on them.

“Alright, get ’em up and inside,” The first voice ordered. “Get the truck out of here.”

Mark stood up, then lifted Jen to her feet. The barrel of a large revolver appeared in the light and motioned them forward. After they got moving, the flashlight turned off with a click, dropping them into inky blackness. Jen stumbled as her feet met the end of a concrete pathway, then she followed it as they made their way up a gentle incline. Behind them, they heard the truck’s door slam. A moment later, snow and gravel crunched under its tires as it turned around and drove back down the mountain.

“Get inside,” the second male voice said quietly. “Door’s open.” Mark obeyed. A moment later, a switch clicked, and they were bathed in the light of a table lamp.

They stood in the living room of what looked like someone’s weekend cabin. An old couch sat against one wall, while a mounted buck with a wide rack looked down on them from the wall above it. At the far end of the room, a black iron stove sat upon a platform of bricks. Jen could hear the crackle of a fire coming from it, and the heat it put out felt good after the shock of the winter cold outside.