The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [51]
>Bring Henry in.
>How far?
>All the way.
>Repeat.
There was a pause, then: >I trust that man with my life.
And our lives, Laurel thought, before switching the Metapad off.
When Laurel returned to the lower rail area, Henry and Raul hadn’t moved. They sat in the same spot and seemed frozen in time but for their empty mugs. She reached for her now-tepid drink and made a face, but she was thirsty.
“Shepherd says you’re our only hope.”
“Shepherd?”
“Your friend, our … boss.” She darted a glance to Raul.
“I see.” Henry’s beard contorted, and Laurel supposed he was smiling. “Shoot.”
Laurel briefed him about their scheme and replayed her exchange with Shepherd.
Henry nodded when she finished. “He’s right. Drawing the DHS away, if those things you have on your necks work as locators, is simple enough. But what about them?” Henry glanced toward the side entrance.
“What do you mean?”
Henry rubbed the sole of a scuffed boot on the floor. “You said they were hired help.”
“That’s right, but after the fiasco they share our boat. Out there they’re dead, and they know it.”
“To clear the police roadblocks would require a major incident,” Henry said.
“Those were Shepherd’s words. A fire?”
“I doubt it. Fire brigades and a few police perhaps, but even a plane crash wouldn’t clear the roads unless it was in a highly populated area, and that’s out of the question.”
Henry closed his eyes and seemed to doze for a couple of endless minutes. “There could be a way, but we would need more people and equipment. I can volunteer my services and contacts but can’t speak for the others. I don’t have any money. Mercenaries and gear can be expensive.”
“Can you get us out?”
“I can try.”
Laurel had already booted her Metapad and was frantically pecking at its screen. After a few seconds, the first reply flashed across the screen.
>Done. What do you need?
She tilted the screen so Henry could see and waited.
“Twenty,” he deadpanned.
“Million?”
Henry nodded once.
She hesitated, then typed: >20.
A second later: >Done.
And then: >Where? When? How?
Henry glanced at the screen and must have pursed his lips, because the mass of hair on his face swelled. “Where can he pick you up?”
She told him the location Shepherd had described in a disused warehouse. “He can’t get any closer.” Then she held her breath.
Henry reached out his pawlike hand and held her wrist in a delicate grip, as if wary of breaking it. Laurel did a quick double take to discover he was peering at her watch—02:16—before closing his eyes once more. “His pickup point is good, in eight hours. Split the money into three bags: two with five and one with ten. Make that garbage bags. It has a poetic ring to it.”
chapter 20
02:26
A white dash flashed twice on his screen and faded to black. Once the link was severed, Harper Tyler peered down the lines of text on the screen, the trail of a carefully planned exercise gone wrong. To one side, the racks of sophisticated equipment he’d used to eavesdrop on the DHS and police movements blinked in a slow cadence. Traffic was low and the wolf pack on standby, ready to pounce at the slightest move of their prey. The idea of a carefully planned exercise was a euphemism. The success or failure of any action depended on strategy, which in turn hinged on sound intelligence. It was now obvious that the senator’s intelligence and his own sucked. Russo hadn’t been in true hibernation; he had been condemned to a slow death. His status, according to Laurel, could only be described as comatose. It was painfully obvious that the enemy had kept a card up its sleeve—an ace that Tyler didn’t factor into the delicate equation of springing Russo from the Washington sugar cube. That he couldn’t have known the inmate’s neck sensors doubled as homing beacons was no excuse. Had he designed the sensors, he would have insisted on such a simple and inexpensive circuit addition.
Tyler blinked at the double digit on the screen. Twenty million was a hefty chunk of cash—its worth plummeting rapidly but still a lot of money.