Assuming everything goes well.
* * *
When they came for Jason, they did so in the dark. Half-blinded by a flashlight, Jason still recognized Captain Ripley. The others he thought were Jordan and Kudravetz. The core of X’s detail. Old-school. They pulled Jason to his feet, and every inch of the journey hurt.
“Get dressed.”
They gave him civilian clothes, and Jason did as he was told. They took him into the hall. Cuffs only. No chains.
“This way.”
Ripley set a fast pace, and they met no one as they moved down deserted hallways, and passed through checkpoints that would normally be guarded. That set off alarm bells, but when Jason slowed his pace, they yanked him hard by the arms. Outside, the sky was clear and dark.
Not dawn.
Not even close.
They drew him along a dim path, cellblock D emerging from the gloom.
No lights on the towers.
No movement.
With each turn, Jason ticked off places they weren’t taking him.
Not the infirmary.
Not death row.
They weren’t taking him to X, and that made the bells sing.
Ripley said, “Six minutes.”
Jason felt the tension, the new tempo. They hustled him toward the admin building, where they passed two guards, down at the gate, and bleeding. Ripley got them through, and locked the gate behind them.
“Shift change in four minutes.”
They rushed through the darkened building, found another guard down at the entrance, and two more on the inside. They moved Jason down zigzag stairs, and into a subbasement hallway that led to a concrete ramp lit by dim bulbs in rusted cages. The big guards urged him up the slope to a parking garage occupied by a single car and lots of dark corners. If Jason wanted to disappear a man, this would be a good way to do it, a quiet, clean kill, then in the trunk and gone. At the car, Ripley popped the trunk. Inside was a spare tire and a jack, a water bottle and a ratty blanket. “Get in.”
“No.”
“Get in the damn trunk.”
“You’ll have to kill me first,” Jason said.
Something primal showed on Ripley’s face. Jason might be injured, but he’d gone toe to toe with X more times than any man alive. Three guards or not, no one wanted to roll those dice. “Okay, tough guy. Back seat, but on the floor.”
“Ripley, no…”
“Shut up, Kudravetz. Get him in. Cover him up.”
Jason didn’t give an inch.
“Get in the car,” Ripley said.
“Where are you taking me?”
“We don’t have time for this.” Ripley drew a revolver Jason had not seen or suspected. Guards did not carry inside the walls. Not ever. “I’ll say please if it makes things easier.”
Jason let the fight bleed out of his limbs—no choice. They got him in the car, down deep in the shadows, beneath a blanket that smelled like mothballs and gasoline. Ripley and Jordan got in front, Ripley behind the wheel. Kudravetz took the back seat, and his face pale white as he stared down in the gloom. “Fuck this up, and you’ll kill us all.”
Ripley turned the key. The engine caught.
“Cover your face.”
Jason did, but kept enough of a gap to see a slice of concrete ceiling. The car lurched into motion, turned a tight radius, and angled up a second ramp. When it stopped, he heard steel rumble as a metal door rolled on heavy-gauge tracks. Then they were outside.
“One minute. We’re cutting this close.”
The main gate was brightly lit. Ripley spoke to a guard, and the gate ground open, so massive that Jason felt the vibration. The car rolled forward, and they were through. Jason saw treetops and firelight, then heard the rumble of the crowd. Jordan said, “Jesus, there must be a thousand of them by now.”
In seconds, bodies crowded the car, signs stabbing up and down as people yelled at the car and at each other, a wash of angry faces. Ripley intimidated with the big engine. Short lurches. Hard stops. Some backed off. Others beat on the car. When they were through, the sky opened up, and so did Ripley.
“Pursuit?”
“No.”
“Alarms?”
“Nothing yet.”
They hit the tree line, and blew through it in a boil of gravel and dust. “Kudravetz, let him up.”
Jason got off the floorboards, and held on for dear life. Too much car and not enough traction. When they reached the state road, Ripley pumped the brakes and turned left, rear end drifting until the tires caught pavement. Then it was forty miles an hour, racing fast to sixty-five and ninety. The car looked old, but had the goods where it counted: rock steady on the shocks, engine still eager as they broke a hundred, and reached out for one-ten. Kudravetz was watching him closely, and so was Jordan, both of them wary and ready for anything. Jason thought, Pagans, payback, Darius Simms. Simms was the kind to want his payback in person, to look Jason in the eyes, and say something stupid like, You shot me twice, motherfucker, and nobody does that to Darius Simms …
“How about now you tell me where we’re going?”
Ripley’s eyes flashed in the rearview. “A farmhouse. Not far.”
Wind poured through open windows, and Jason watched the dark fields and distant woods. More places to disappear a man. He ran scenarios, but none looked good. The speedometer was pegged at one-ten, and Ripley still carried that .38.
“Ten minutes.” Ripley’s eyes, again in the mirror. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”
* * *
Nothing marked the turn but a battered mailbox with catseye reflectors that glowed yellow from a hundred yards out. Ripley slowed the car, and turned onto a dirt road in an abandoned field. A hundred feet in, two four-wheel-drive vehicles were angled in to block the drive. “Take it easy, people. No surprises here.”
Where the vehicles blocked the road, two men stood on the hard, red dirt, M16s carried at the low-ready. Maybe ex-military, definitely trained. When Ripley stopped the car, one maintained his position center road as the other came to the driver’s-side window, and shone a light into the car. “Names?”
Ripley shielded his eyes, pointing in turn. “Ripley. Jordan. Kudravetz. That’s Jason French behind me.”
The light stayed on Ripley’s face for five full seconds, then swept the other faces a second time. “Any weapons in the vehicle?”
Ripley handed over the .38.
Slowly, Jason noted.
“Wait for us to move the vehicles, then proceed to the house at no more than fifteen miles an hour.” He straightened, and keyed his radio. “One car, inbound. Four men.”
He got into a Bronco, and the second man got into a Jeep, rocking the vehicles through the ditch line and off the road. Ripley drove them through the gap, and the vehicles rolled back out of the fields, blocking the drive behind them.
Not Pagans, Jason thought.
Not unless they contracted out top-dollar private security.
For a moment, he thought military brass might have sent private contractors to make sure the Bến Hải River massacre stayed well and deeply buried, that General Laughtner’s fear of exposure meant no loose threads could be left to dangle. And Jason felt very much like that loose thread. The dirt track stretched into blackness and scrub, no sign of any house. Maybe the general thought it wasn’t enough to string him out on morphine, then send him home disgraced and shot full of heroin. But that didn’t feel right, either.