Broken Angel (19 page)

FORTY

J
ordan believes you are ready?” Brij asked gently. The two of them followed a path up the hills, away from the cabin, where they’d left all the others behind.

“Soon.” Caitlyn didn’t want to elaborate. Her joy in seeing Papa alive had not dissipated, but she was overwhelmed by their conversation. And what he’d asked her to do.

“Papa has been one of the Clan for years, hasn’t he?” She felt there was so much she hadn’t known about him.

“He’s been serving us and those around him since he first fled to Appalachia.”

“With me.”

“With you.” Brij must have understood some of her bitterness. “Don’t be harsh on him. He had no choice. Coming here with you was the only way he could protect you. And now, it seems, you are the only way to protect us. He did explain, didn’t he?”

Caitlyn nodded.

“It wasn’t his idea. It was mine.”

They pushed upward, with Caitlyn leaning on her cane every step. Papa had wrapped her ankle, but it still throbbed.

“Since you were a little girl, he’s wanted you to have the surgery. It was impossible when you were young, at least here in Appalachia.”

Caitlyn remembered that day in the doctor’s office, the day after her sixth birthday. Wearing the red shoes. Hearing her father and the doctor talk about wings. And believing they had meant the crippled bird.

“He did tell you that there is a surgeon waiting for you Outside?”

Caitlyn barely fought back quiet tears. She managed to nod.

“I was the one to ask Jordan to find a way for officials Outside to learn of your presence in Appalachia,” Brij said. “To assure they’d send someone in to get the two of you.”

“Why?”

“Instead of telling you,” Brij said, “let me show you.”

He pointed up the mountain.

Pierce knew when he heard the sound of the choppers that it would be the roar of defeat. Mason had forced Carney and him downhill far enough that when the girl approached, she’d be unaware that the men were there—especially Mason, the watchful hunter who’d be hiding in a tree.

He and Carney would be in the hands of Bar Elohim by nightfall, the girl would probably be dead, and Pierce’s mission to capture Caitlyn a failure. He was unaccustomed to experiencing defeat, but this bizarre country kept him confused and off balance. No one was who they claimed to be.

The entire way downhill, Mason gloated to the bound men.

“After the girl goes into the mountain, I light the heat flares, which will bring in Bar Elohim’s men, the soldiers. I’m going to tell them where to find you. Then, I get the girl and destroy the Clan.”

Mason told them to stop, and after a warning shot that nearly grazed Carney’s head, he forced the sheriff to wrap Pierce to a tree with duct tape, then his own legs and waist. Mason finished the rest, and with final flourishes, he pasted tape over their mouths. “Hope you’ve enjoyed Appalachia, Agent. I think you’ll get to see some more
elite
attractions soon. You might never want to leave.”

Mason left to watch for the girl, and Pierce continued to wait for the choppers.

From his hidden viewpoint in the tree, Mason sat motionless near the hidden entrance. In the heat, he was slick with his own sweat, but he didn’t mind. He knew his body was working hard to keep his temperature regulated.

The sweat led to a deep thirst that was worsened because he had deliberately avoided drinking water earlier, anticipating the effect it would have on his bladder. He couldn’t afford to move to relieve himself and had no intention of wetting his pants like an infant or a debilitated old man.

He was fine with the thirst. His reward would be well worth it.

Time continued to pass easily for him as he waited for the girl. He enjoyed visualizing the moment when his knife would cut through flesh and muscle and imagining all the different ways that Caitlyn would react in horror.

This pleasure gave him a feeling like serenity, and he was almost disappointed when he caught his first glimpse of her, walking up the path with an old man leaning on a walking stick and showing a distinct limp.

They moved to the entrance without even looking around to see if it was safe. The old man lifted the door, and they disappeared down the steps.

Mason decided to give them a five-minute head start.

FORTY-ONE

A
s she followed Brij down the steps into the mountain, Caitlyn still marveled at the door that had been set into the ground. Even from three feet away, she’d been unable to see it, camouflaged by a mat of pine needles and flat rocks that looked like part of the ground.

Her amazement continued when the door silently slid shut on its hydraulic hinges, for it did not enclose them in darkness.

The tunnel was square, easily two feet higher than her head, wide enough for a car to drive through, shored up with beams of lumber. She was able to take all of it in because of string lighting—the small white bulbs used on Christmas trees. It stretched as far as she could see down the length of the tunnel, and the gentle slope of the passageway was obvious as it continued into the heart of the mountain.

“The tunnels are part of a mine that existed a hundred years ago,” Brij said. “We’ve expanded the system, of course. The lights and ventilation fans are powered by a water turbine deep inside the mountain.”

Although the tunnel continued straight ahead, they had reached another tunnel that bisected this one. It too had a string of lights stretching downward on a long, gentle slope. A breeze touched Caitlyn’s face, and she was grateful for the cool air.

Her silence was a trait belonging to her curiosity. She remembered reading a forbidden book with Papa in her childhood,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
and how she always wondered if Alice was very afraid, falling into that strange place. As she stopped to examine a flat-screen monitor on the wall, she thought how she never imagined Wonderland to be a world of mine shafts.

The monitor showed red symbols against a black background:

“It’s how we navigate,” Brij explained. “There are over a hundred miles of tunnels. At every intersection, you’ll find a monitor with battery backup. Each monitor has twenty of twenty-six symbols.”

He pointed at the markings to their side and hovered his finger above the
          symbol.

“Look at the wall of the other tunnel where it reaches this one. You won’t see the same symbol there.”

Caitlyn studied it. By comparing both sets of symbols, she saw that the
          had been replaced with a
.

“Which tunnel do we take?” Brij tapped the monitor.

Because of the symbols on her vidpod, Caitlyn had no difficulty answering. She pointed at the
. “This one. Underlined on my vidpod.”

“Essentially, that’s our system. Once you know the symbol or combination of symbols that marks your passage, you simply check each intersection for it.”

“Combination?”

“Twenty symbols, but hundreds of tunnels. Sometimes it’s a combination of two symbols, sometimes three. The screens are networked to a mainframe computer. When we want to change the patterns, it’s done instantly.”

“Easy to get confused,” Caitlyn said. “A lot of the symbols look the same.”

Brij nodded. “By design. It takes years and years to learn the tunnel mazes. Even then, not all of the Clan know every tunnel. Nor will they. We’ve accumulated a lot of resources. Medical, technical, even wealth. It’s dispersed and hidden throughout the mountain. Our headquarters too. Even if Bar Elohim’s soldiers penetrated the mountain, it’s unlikely they’d know where to go. And all the tunnels are rigged with explosives at certain points to collapse them. We can seal off any area we need to and retreat elsewhere.”

“What about the legends?” Caitlyn followed Brij down the tunnel. “The stories we were told as children to scare us. That the Clan let people wander for days and days until they die of thirst. Sometimes worse.”

“Just legend,” Brij said simply. “We don’t fight. We don’t allow people to die. I can tell you how the legends get started, though. The outlaw perimeter. Or drug-induced anterograde amnesia.”

Caitlyn stopped short. “You force someone to take drugs?”

“Never forced. It’s voluntary. Unless it’s someone like the woman attending to Theo, who needed to be rescued quickly. Usually, when we find someone, it’s a condition of the rescue. The drug flunitrazepam is dissolved in water, and for the next ten hours, the short-term memory can’t transfer events to long-term memory. Anything beyond their immediate attention span disappears when it’s replaced by the next event. That protects us when we let them go, keeps our operational secrets intact and successful. But I’m sure the occasional nightmares that follow get embellished.”

“Did you give me the drug?”

“Can you recall our conversation as we walked from the cabin?”

“Yes.”

“That’s your answer. You haven’t lost the ability to access short-term memories.”

“I guess you trust me.”

Brij put a light hand on her shoulder. “Caitlyn, we are trusting you with everything, including our future.”

When he reached the entrance, Mason unscrewed the cigar-sized tube he’d been carrying in his back pocket. He looked around for a place to prop it and found a small crack in a sheet of rock.

Perfect.

The crack was clear of any natural debris that might catch fire, which was important. If a fire spread into the valley, it would be an obstacle to dropping choppers into the valley and would threaten the entire operation.

Mason set the small tube into place. He took his canteen from his belt and poured water into the tube.

Instantly, the magnesium powder inside burst into a white flame, burning at over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

Mason lifted the door to the entrance and took a few steps down inside. He jammed a rock into the hinges so that it wouldn’t close. The soldiers would find it easily.

Then he climbed down into the tunnel.

Jordan approached Billy, who was sitting on the steps of the cabin, head hanging down, as if recovering from a horrible hangover.

“I need you,” Jordan said.

Billy raised his head and blinked. He looked confused, like Jordan had spoken to him in an alien language.

“Help me up the path.” Jordan felt like he could barely move. The beating he’d taken from Mason and the dogs would take weeks of recovery. “Two men are still up on the mountain. The bounty hunter bound and left them. We need to get them down before the choppers arrive.”

Billy stood. “I can do it.”

Jordan was glad the boy didn’t ask how Jordan knew that choppers would be coming. Or how he knew about the men and what Mason Lee had done with them.

Jordan didn’t have time to explain.

Or to fabricate a lie.