The voice made Mark jerk, because for an instant it seemed to come from the dead man himself. Just a trick of the mind. Adrenaline was cooking in Mark’s veins now, and if he wasn’t careful it would overrun him. You had to stay cool under fire, and he was doing anything but that. Not only his focus was slipping; his whole damn mind seemed to be.
He took the dead man’s rifle, then rolled him over. As he did so, he heard the voice again.
You’ll die here. All of you.
Again Mark jerked back.
“What the hell’s the matter?” Larry whispered behind him.
Mark didn’t know how to answer. Adrenaline, that was all. You felt crazy things in crazy moments, and this moment was about as crazy as they got.
He grabbed the dead man’s radio in a hurry, tugged it free, and then crawled back to the gulch with the radio and the rifle, heading right toward Larry, who was still scouring the trees through his scope, finger on the trigger. He wasn’t all the way back when the radio came to life in his hand, and this time he could hear it clearly:
“We have a runner! The second woman is out!”
Lynn jumped to her feet. “Sabrina!” she called. More of a shout than Mark would have liked, but even as she said it, she moved sideways and deeper into the gulch, wisely anticipating that she’d risked giving up their position. No shots came, but an answer did, a woman’s voice shouting without Lynn’s restraint. “Lynn! Lynn, where are you!”
Mark turned and started to tell Lynn not to answer, that shouts would get them killed, but Larry’s shot silenced them all. Lynn took a stumbling step back, Mark stopped crawling, and Sabrina Baldwin’s shouts ended. For a few seconds, the forest was absolutely still.
Then Larry lowered the rifle.
“Had to take it. She wasn’t even into the trees yet, and he’d stopped to fire. With that AR spitting bullets, he was going to kill her fast.”
Mark stared up at the pink-tinted peak where Larry had fired, and though he couldn’t see anything, he could hear something now. Someone was crashing clumsily through the woods. He scrambled to the base of a tree and lifted his revolver, but Larry didn’t move at all, just stood with the rifle lowered and waited on whoever was running out of the daylight and into the darkness.
A minute later, they saw her-a woman, slipping and stumbling down the slope, falling every few feet but bouncing up so fast it all seemed part of the plan.
“Sabrina!” Lynn climbed out of the gulch and ran toward the other woman and Mark made no move to stop her. Instead, he looked at his uncle.
“We’ve got two. Lynn said there were three men.”
“That’s all that have been shooting, at least. I’ve found four people with the scope since we got here. Two are here, and two are dead.”
Lynn Deschaine and Sabrina Baldwin met halfway up the slope. Sabrina fell into Lynn’s arms, and Lynn tugged her down immediately, pulling her to the ground and guiding her behind a fallen tree. Mark watched them and wondered what horrors they had shared and how they’d managed to get loose in a place like this.
“Nice shooting, Uncle,” he said.
“Shit, son, that was target practice. You were the one who went Wild Bill Hickok.”
It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. The bullet had punched through the other man’s heart before Mark knew what had happened.
For some reason, that bothered him.
He wiped sweat from his face and said, “Lynn? Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Lynn got to her feet and helped Sabrina Baldwin to hers and they came down the side of the mountain together, arm in arm, as if neither of them wanted to risk letting go again.
“You okay?” Mark asked the new woman. Sabrina Baldwin was shaking, but she nodded.
“We need to get out of here,” Mark said. “Is there anyone left to stop us?”
“I don’t think so,” Sabrina said. “Not if we hurry. He’ll be down for a while longer.”
“Who will be?”
“One of the men who works for Eli. Garland Webb.”
“Garland Webb,” Mark echoed. His voice had the same flat crack as Larry’s killing shot.
She looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re him,” she said. “You’re the one. Novak.”
“Yes.”
“Violet…I think she’s your mother? Violet shot him with a dart.”
Lynn said, “What? She did?” and she seemed stunned when Sabrina Baldwin nodded.
“She saved me,” Sabrina said.
“Where are all the ATV riders?” Larry asked. “We saw plenty of tracks coming in.”
“I don’t know. There was a large group this morning, but they left. If they come back, though…”
Lynn said, “She’s right-we need to get out of here fast. There are enough of them that we’ll be outnumbered, badly.”
Sabrina said, “My husband…do you know anything?”
“He was alive,” Mark said. “And I gave him his chance to play it the way he wanted. He didn’t want to risk doing anything that might threaten you.”
He thought about that and then looked at the radio in his hand and said, “You know, I just might be able to get a report on Jay.”
He put the dead man’s radio to his lips. Keyed the mike and heard static.
“Hello, gentlemen,” he said. His heart thundered but his voice was steady. “This is Markus Novak, reporting in from Wardenclyffe. I’ve come to see Garland Webb. We are long overdue.”
67
This is Markus Novak, reporting in from Wardenclyffe. I’ve come to see Garland Webb. We are long overdue.”
At the top of the tower, hot stick in hand, Jay heard Novak’s voice and thought: He made it. The crazy bastard actually made it to them.
Then he thought: He’d better not ruin it.
He reached for the radio and spoke before anyone else had responded.
“Novak, this is Jay Baldwin, where is my wife, have you seen my wife?”
Down below, Eli Pate screamed at Jay to shut up, but Novak’s voice returned on the radio immediately.
“Jay, she is safe and well. Repeat, she is safe and well.”
Jay sagged back against the transmission tower. He was not aware of the pulsing, swarming current, his own fatigue, the heights, or even his own tears.
She is safe and well.
Eli Pate’s voice came over the radio next. Calm, no trace of the shouting he’d done down below. “Mr. Novak. What a surprise. It will be good to meet you one of these days, but I’m going to suggest you leave the property immediately. It will not end well for you there. That is a promise.”
A long pause, then Novak: “I’m going to assume I’m hearing from the great Eli Pate himself?”
“The same,” Pate said. “You are no doubt proud of your achievements right now. Hold on to that feeling for as many minutes as you can. I assure you, they won’t be plentiful.”
Safe and well. Sabrina was safe and well. Jay looked at the radio as if he wanted to embrace it, and then he heard Pate come back with an addendum.
“All listening must understand that this changes nothing. The plan is in motion. Wardenclyffe has not been compromised. I am on scene right now, and we are nine minutes to shutdown.”
He had to be talking about the train. Jay had nine minutes to get off the tower before it came down and brought a half a million volts with it.
“Do you hear that, Novak?” Pate said over the radio. “Please don’t believe that you are a concern to me.”
As Pate talked, he walked. Up from the trees and onto the tracks, standing between the strung cables that would be invisible to the engineer until too late. Novak had stopped responding, and all of Pate’s attention was on this place, wherever it was.
None of it was on Jay.
Safe and well. Repeat, she is safe and well.
Jay looked down at Pate and thought: You have no more leverage, asshole. You have no more power.