All three of their captors got in after them.
The van then sped off into the dark Florida night.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They sat in the back as whoever was driving the van took them on a journey around the sprawling facility.
Parkowski sat on one side of the van’s interior, DePresti on the other. One of Everson’s goons held a pistol — a much smaller one than the lead agent was armed with — against her forehead, while the other did the same to her boyfriend.
Everson sat at the far end of the van from the door, his handgun next to him. He sat quietly, his eyes never leaving the two young engineers.
They hadn’t bound or gagged either of them. They didn’t have to. Parkowski and DePresti were both terrified.
Parkowski’s eyes darted from side to side like a caged animal, looking for a way to escape. Her arms and legs were tense, and she wanted nothing more than to leap free from her captors. She would have if not for the cold steel of the pistol pressed against her temple.
DePresti was almost in shock. He was a military man, sure, but his desk-bound Space Force career hadn’t prepared him for this moment. He probably hadn’t been in a physical confrontation since his unarmed combat training at the Air Force Academy. He had initially shown quite a bit of resistance to Everson, but that had trailed off as the realization that these could be his final moments had kicked in. He held his head against his knees and rocked quickly back and forth.
She wasn’t sure how they were going to do it, though. Were they going to murder them here, at the Cape, executing them on a grassy bank in the middle of the night and feeding their bodies to the alligators or sharks? Or would they take them out into the water and throw them overboard with weights attached to their legs? Parkowski’s imagination ran wild.
The van turned around, making a full one-hundred-eighty-degree turn before going back in the direction they had come from.
Parkowski made up her mind.
She was going to get free, escape, go to the authorities or the media or whoever would listen to her story of a rogue intelligence apparatus of the United States killing her mentor and trying to kill her and her boyfriend. There was a lot that they could cover up, but they wouldn’t try and hide that. That, or she would die trying.
However, she needed to get a hold of DePresti.
Her boyfriend wasn’t paying any attention to her or their captors. He sat, seemingly hoping that the entire problem would vanish.
But, how could she get his attention when she had a gun pressed up against her head?
She thought and thought.
There was no way that she was going to go down like this.
The van hit a pothole, slightly skewing their arrangement in the back. No one wore seatbelts.
Parkowski’s eyes darted over to the van’s rear door. There was a small window at the top — a detail she had initially missed — and a latch that when swung downwards, would open the door outwards.
Her captors had failed to lock it.
They hit another pothole, jostling them again. But, she had come up with an idea.
The next time the van jolted, she nudged DePresti’s foot slightly with hers.
His eyes met hers. “What?” he quickly mouthed.
Parkowski’s eyes darted to the door latch, then back to DePresti. She blinked twice, slowly, deliberately.
It took a moment for him to process. When he did, his eyes widened.
Another pothole. Another jostling of the passengers in the back. The Space Force really needed to maintain their roads better.
The next time they hit one she would strike.
Parkowski coiled her right arm, the one closest to the man with the gun to her head, like a snake ready to pounce.
She was ready, but it felt like the moment to strike would never come.
The road underneath the panel van became smoother. They must be on a different section of the base, she thought. There were no more potholes.
Parkowski felt the pressure of the cold weapon against her head lessen just a fraction. Her captor was getting sloppy.
If she was going to make a move to free herself and DePresti, it needed to be soon. She locked eyes with her boyfriend again, then nodded just a fraction. DePresti responded with the same gesture.
If not a pothole, another disruption to the rear of the van would have to do.
Just a few moments later, the van’s driver provided the opportunity.
They took a left turn just a little too quickly, throwing the occupants of the back of the van around haphazardly.
Parkowski’s watcher took the pistol off of her head for just a second to right himself.
She took a deep breath and allowed for everything around her to slow down slightly.
Her captor was in the process of placing his pistol back against her head when Parkowski grabbed her right fist with her left hand, and, using the force of both of her arms, slammed her elbow into the ribs of the man next to her.
She got lucky. He wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest or any armor. Her elbow went right into his solar plexus, pushing it upwards and knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over in pain.
DePresti made a similar move to his captor’s face and neck. Less than half a second after Parkowski struck her opponent, her boyfriend jammed his fist into his captor’s throat. Instead of pulling it back for another strike, he kept pushing after the initial impact, sending the man off of the seat and to the front of the van, towards Everson.
Parkowski was already moving towards the door. She grabbed the handle and swung it down. The door opened up and swung outwards with her hanging onto it.
Looking back she saw Everson grabbing for his pistol but the heavy handgun was hard to manage. Neither of his goons would be of much use — the one she had hit clutched his side while the other held both hands to his neck from DePresti’s brutal strike.
The van was traveling about thirty miles per hour along a two-lane road. It wasn’t pitch black anymore; there was quite a bit of light coming from a huge launch complex to the right side of the road.
Parkowski squinted as she swung outwards to see if she could make out where they were. The launch pad was well-lit, dozens of floodlights illuminating a single-core white rocket with black scorch marks on it, topped by a long, extended fairing. Next to the rocket was a large gantry with a crew arm extended at the top towards the rocket. At the top of the gantry was a single white lighting rod. Just to its right was a giant water tower with the OuterTek logo on it.
Her mind whirred as she rotated with the van’s door. She knew where she was. That was LC-39a, the same launch pad that had launched the ILIAD mission. It was the only pad with that configuration — they had finally come full circle. They had crossed over onto the NASA side of the cape and were now on Kennedy Space Center.
The moment the door was fully extended, Parkowski let go of the handle. She fell hard onto the pavement below, thankfully landing on her good shoulder rather than her injured one. It still hurt like a bitch, though. She rolled towards the grass on the side of the road.
DePresti had leaped out of the van as well and landed hard but upright on his two feet. He took a couple of quick steps in the direction of Parkowski and then broke into a full-blown sprint away from their captors.
Parkowski got to her feet as she heard a shot fired, the bullet hitting the asphalt about two feet to her right as she headed away from the road.
She stumbled and almost fell. DePresti grabbed her arm and got her back to her feet.
Parkowski didn’t hear the van’s engine anymore. They must have stopped and gotten out to pursue them. A bullet whizzed over their heads as they scrambled away, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and their pursuers.