Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (28 page)

S
orenstam stuck to the walls of the ravine, trying to glimpse the factory complex while staying below the line of sight. She told Oscar to keep low.

“Don't present a silhouette on the ridge,” she said.

“It's dark.”

“The moon is up. A moving human form will be identifiable.” She sidestepped when the slope steepened. “For all we know, they have night-vision capability. You'd stand out from the background like an electric green frog.”

She knew that Aiden and Harper were on the approach road to the complex, probably a mile and a half downhill to the southeast. From here she could see no lights from Harper's car. She tried again to call, without success. Even if she could see the car, that didn't mean she could call them—her phone needed to connect with a cell tower, and she had no idea where the nearest one was. Her portable police radio would connect with anybody on the frequency, but only if they were in range. And within line of sight. They had come to the empty quarter. California raw and unvarnished and wild.

She crouched low, set the shotgun across her thighs, and opened her fleece. She tucked her phone inside the folds of the jacket and typed.

Oscar said, “What's that all about?”

She continued to type. “For a tech guy and a career criminal, I'm surprised you need an explanation. It's dark and what's the brightest light for miles around?”

“Oh.”

She was hiding the display so its light wouldn't be seen down below and give them away, working into position on the uphill side of the plant.

APPROACHING FROM HILL TO WEST. WILL HOLD POSITION 100 YARDS OUTSIDE FENCE. DID YOU GET EARLIER MESSAGE?

She pushed
SEND
and stood up.

Oscar said, “I'm not a career criminal. That hurts my feelings.”

She continued down the hill. “Then prove it. Come on.”

Aiden's phone vibrated. He said, “Text from Erika.”

He read it aloud, staring at the screen. “What earlier message?”

Harper slowed the car to a near crawl. When they went through a dip, she turned the headlights on again. They were close enough to the plant that the engine noise might be audible. Leaving the lights off would only give Travis cause to get twitchy.

Aiden stared at the darkened road, pensive. “We should split up before we get to the gate, to prevent us both being ambushed. One of us gets out at the next bend. The other drives up to the gate, parks the car, and ducks out the back, to let Travis think we're still in it.”

“And go cross-country to meet Sorenstam on the hill?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She was quiet. Her eyes shifted back and forth. “You get out. I'll drive to the gate.”

“Roger that,” he said.

“I'm going to park half a mile outside the gate and leave it running with the lights on. You recon and I'll meet you.” She saw him about to question her and brooked no dissent. “Travis will have to deal with me on my terms. You're right—if I drive through the gate, I won't come out alive. So we have to find Erika and go in the back together. We have to find Piper in there. Otherwise, it's . . .”

She stopped, unable to bring herself to utter the words. She knew there was no such thing as spell-casting or talismanic protection, but she couldn't bring herself to say
They'll kill her
, not within sight of the place Piper was being held.

“It's a risk,” Aiden said.

“Motion sensors, night vision, yada yada. You run. I'll be a minute behind you.”

After a moment, he nodded. “We only have a couple of minutes. Once I find a place where the line of sight to the factory is broken, I'm going to jump out. I mean jump, too. Get going before they can notice that the car has stopped. We can't let them think anything hinky is happening.”

“Agreed.” She downshifted into second and slowed to ten mph.

“I need you to tell me every scrap of information about the complex you can remember. Perimeter security. The layout of the buildings. Access, egress, blind spots.”

“The complex had a cyclone fence surrounding it. Six feet, no barbed wire. Don't know if it's been upgraded.”

“I can climb a six-foot fence.”

She stayed quiet. He read her thoughts.

“If my leg holds,” he said, “and even if it doesn't, I'll make it over. But I don't expect any of the doors to the factory to be unlocked.”

“I was only in there a couple of times,” she said, “and it's a big shambling place.”

She tried to remember it. What came back was the dim and dingy light, the smell of dust and grease, the scale of the place.

“It's a multibuilding complex. Factory and warehouse. The factory is as big as a football field. It has a main factory floor and two basement levels. Underground, it's got long corridors where trucks and forklifts could drive to load and unload components,” she said. “Belowground, it's concrete construction and highly compartmentalized. It's a maze. Multiple staircases, plus ladders between floors in a few access tunnels.”

“Access tunnels—any that run beneath the perimeter fence and come up outside it?”

“A couple.”

She thought of the rat run—a narrow series of tunnels that ran between walls and above the lowest basement ceiling, before burrowing beneath the fence to a transformer building.

“But I only crawled through the tunnels one time, with Oscar, when we were kids. There's no way I could find the entrance point outside the fence tonight in the dark. Sorry.”

They could see the outline of the complex in the distance, a boxy set of buildings inside the dull shine of the fence. Harper inched along the road, waiting until they could get out of sight in a dip or behind an outcropping of rock.

Aiden said, “When we go in, we'll try for a door along the back side.”

“If it's locked? Don't break a window. They'll hear.”

“You don't have a set of lock picking tools, do you?” he said. “Bolt cutters? Glass cutter?”

She shot him a cool glance. “No. Don't, won't, not ever.” At least, not ever again.

Aiden nodded, slowly. “Good thing I do.”

The road began a brief downhill and rounded a bend where it dipped behind a ledge of rock. The headlights hit the middle of the uphill but didn't reach the top.

“Ready,” he said. “Do this quick.”

Harper downshifted sharply, sending both of them lurching against the seat belts. At the bottom of the dip, she nearly skidded to a stop and yanked the parking break. Aiden jumped out. He ran around the back of the MINI to the driver's side. She lowered the window.

He grabbed the window frame and bent down. “What did they make at this factory?”

She put the car in gear. “Rocket fuel.”

S
ilhouetted against the rocks in the moonlight, Aiden laughed humorlessly. “Figures. Why not?”

He banged his palm on the roof of the car. When she looked again, he was gone.

Heart pounding, she drove up the hill toward the factory. She crested the rise and it came into sight. Dark, entirely, seemingly abandoned behind the chain-link fence. It looked like a ghostly prison.

The road ran straight the last half mile, directly at the gate. Her fears grew sharp barbs inside. The last time she'd been in that building, she'd been fourteen. It had smelled of chemicals and mossy water.

She turned on the high beams. The gate was open. Inside, the road continued straight ahead, fifty yards to a heavy garage door. On either side of the road, yards were fenced off and piled high with pallets and abandoned equipment. Jesus. Driving in there would be putting herself in a shooting gallery.

Harper stopped, well back. She set the parking brake and felt a dry heave trying to roll up her throat.

She could turn and run. So many people had insisted that Piper wasn't here, wasn't in trouble. Who was she to disagree? She could drive back to L.A. and wait for the cops to investigate the situation. She didn't need to be here, in the last place she ever wanted to be: playing vigilante. Outside the law once again.

Screw that.

She put the car in neutral and took a breath. Phone in her back pocket. Swiss Army knife in her front. Heart jammed high in her throat. She climbed into the backseat, cracked the tailgate, and rolled out of the car to the ground. She silently shut the tailgate and ran across the desert slope toward the hill to the west, hoping Aiden had made it there ahead of her.

Aiden found Sorenstam and Oscar in the rocks on a knob of hillside at the back of the factory complex. They were taking cover behind a welter of boulders.

Erika eyed him in the dark, her hair catching the moonlight. She was chilly and intense. “Where's Harper?”

“Figure ninety seconds behind me.”

He explained the plan to leave the car outside the gate.

Erika nodded. “Makes sense.”

“There's worse to tell.”

He told them Piper's wrist had been slit. Erika inhaled. Oscar shook his head. “That sucks.”

Aiden said, “Back door, we get inside, we find her, get her out.”

Erika said, “You strapped?”

He nodded.

“I have worse to tell, too,” she said. “Travis Maddox works for Spartan Security, under an alias. God knows what resources he has deployed down in that factory.”

“You gotta be freakin' kidding me,” Aiden said.

“Not kidding at all. He's been working in disguise.”

For a second, just a second, Erika looked wry. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead.

She said, “We wait for Harper, then we do it.” She pointed at Oscar. “You stay here. I mean it. You try to run, you'll get nowhere. The coyotes will get you before you reach town. And by that, I mean Eddie Azerov and his canine companion. You made it once, and you should presume that used up your luck. I could cuff your right hand to your left ankle and leave you here. Or you could trust that I can track better than the bad guys, and when I find you, I'll run you over. It's dark. Oops.”

Aiden said, “Take her at her word. You don't want to cross this woman.”

They waited until Oscar said, “Okay.”

Erika turned and peered between rocks at the darkened complex below. Aiden knew she was feeling the heat, but she had been overtaken by the urgency of Piper's dire situation. She had decided she had to throw the dice on rescue.

He should never have doubted that she'd do so.

Aiden felt her nearness, and felt a swell of emotion. She didn't have to be here. She was risking her career, risking herself, and largely because he had asked her to.

She hadn't given up on him. He felt a catch in his chest and he shut his eyes, fixing her in his mind, letting that thought flow through him. Then he exhaled, opened his eyes, and caught her looking at him.

“You're the best,” he said.

She smiled, cool as ever, a pearly presence in the moonlight. “Cheesy pep talk, Coach.”

A second later, they heard pebbles skitter across the ground. He and Erika both raised their weapons.

Harper appeared at the edge of the rocks. She brought herself up short.

“Jesus,” she said.

They lowered their guns. She stood breathing hard, hands at her sides, staring at them darkly. “Guess you're ready. Remember, point the shooty end at the bad guys.”

Erika holstered her pistol. “Got it. Now I have bad news for you. Travis works for Spartan Security. Presume he has a significant surveillance capability and God knows what kind of booby traps inside that factory.”

Harper slowly went down on one knee, as though she'd deflated. She looked at Sorenstam, seemingly hoping it was a joke.

“Tell us everything you know about that factory,” Sorenstam said.

Harper crouched down. On the dirt, she drew a rough outline of the complex with her index finger. “Front gate here. If they have somebody watching, they should be able to see the road and the MINI . . .”

She stopped. Her phone was ringing.

Hunched over behind the rocks, down on one knee, Harper took the phone and answered it. “See me?”

“This isn't Red Rover, Red Rover,” Travis said. “You don't have to ask. Drive through the gate.”

Her head came up sharply. She gave a nervous thumbs-up. Travis apparently believed she was still in the car.

“Not going to do that,” she said. “Y'all come out.”

“Don't be such a coward.”

“Don't play dumb. Walk out the gate and meet my car.”

There was a pause on his end. She held Aiden's gaze. She couldn't believe Travis was actually stumped, or trying to figure out how to play things. But all she could do was hold her ground.

“Call me back when you're ready to come out,” she said, and hung up.

Sorenstam and Aiden stood and checked their weapons. They gave each other a look and some connection fired up between them. Partners, sworn, ready to breach the building together.

Sorenstam said, “If the Kern County deputies get here, they get here. But Piper doesn't have time for us to wait.”

Harper realized they were ready to leave her there behind the rocks with Oscar. That was Aiden's plan to protect her: misdirection. Use the MINI as a distraction while he and Sorenstam went in the back.

Gratitude and sheer relief filled her. She put the back of her hand to her lips and reached for him, but he was already stepping out of reach, chambering a round in his HK.

He turned. “How many connecting hallways in the factory building? Stairs, blind spots? Everything you got, Harper. Quickly.”

They both eyed her tensely. She turned back to the square she had begun to scratch in the sand. “It's . . .”

It was a rat's nest of passageways and dead ends and crawl spaces.

“Piper sounded like she was in a small room, not the main factory floor. It could be . . .”

Staircases that doubled back, catwalks where a sniper could lie in wait.

Her breath caught harshly in her throat. “I have to go with you.”

There was no other way, no time to get in and out and reach Piper unless she herself led them inside.

Sorenstam said, “You're not a sworn officer.”

“That's right, I'm not,”
Harper said. “I don't know how to protect and defend. I know how to intercept and steal. So I'm going to steal Piper back.”

“Harper?” Aiden said.

“Quick, before I change my mind.” She started down the hill and gestured for them to follow.

There was no going back now. Even if Travis did as she was asking, it would take only a few minutes for him to realize that he'd been duped. The clock was ticking. They quietly broke cover and began working their way down the slope to the fence on the back side of the factory.

By the time they reached the fence, Aiden was limping. He was running without complaint, but his stride was noticeably uneven. They crossed the last fifty yards across open ground, in the dark but still visible to anybody on the roof or spotters patrolling the perimeter.

A placard hung on the fence at eye level.
PROTECTED BY SPARTAN SEC
URITY SYSTEMS.
That answered that question, then.

Aiden paused and locked his fingers together in a stirrup. Harper looked at him briefly, saw the pain on his face, and said, “I'm okay.”

She stuck her toes between the diamond links in the fence and climbed. Sorenstam took Aiden's offer and got a quick lift. She heard him exhale, hard, as he boosted her. Sorenstam slickly reached the top and rolled across like an old-school high jumper. She landed lightly. A moment later, she took the shotgun as Aiden passed it over the top of the fence. By the time Harper dropped to the ground, Sorenstam again had it in her hand. She waited while Aiden climbed over. He dropped, and tried to make it look as if it didn't hurt when he landed.

The factory building ran for more than a hundred yards to the east, about ten yards inside the fence. The space was mostly bare. At a couple of places, fifty-five-gallon drums stood rusting on concrete pads.

There were only a few windows along the back wall. That reassured Harper. There had been, at one time, razor wire along the top of the chain-link fence, but it was long gone, rusted or stolen—at least along the section of the fence they had climbed. It was too dark for her to see whether there were cameras on the building, but it was certain when they landed that there weren't motion-sensing lights. They remained in the dark. All she could hear was her own breathing, her own fear trying to leap out.

Aiden took the lead, hurrying to the wall, gun in his hand. Harper followed and pressed herself against the wall beside him. Sorenstam closed up behind her.

Sorenstam held the shotgun across her body, muzzle aimed at the concrete. Her pistol was holstered. Harper glanced at it, and Sorenstam gave her an excoriating look in return.