I don’t know how long I stood there, river water pooling under my wet tennis shoes, waiting for the bullet to rip through my brain. All I know is after a lifetime or two Mike made a decision and came to get me, grabbing me by the shoulder and hurling me toward the safety of the trees.
I stumbled once, tearing the knee in my jeans on the rocky ground. Mike yanked me up and half dragged, half pushed me into the crowded underbrush of the wooded hillside.
He pushed me face-first into the ground and put his hand on the small of my back as he whispered in my ear, “Don’t move!”
The choppers circled slowly overhead. Sometimes they sounded right above us; sometimes the blades’ thumping sounded very far away. The searchlights stabbed through the canopy, and they looked like white columns, the kind you see on Southern mansions, as they illuminated the misty air.
The columns of light kept moving farther and farther away, and after a while I couldn’t hear the helicopters’ engines at all. Finally, I couldn’t take it and told Mike I had to pee.
“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Mike said. So I went behind the nearest tree, and when I came back Mike was sitting up. He unwrapped a piece of gum and carefully folded the stick into his mouth. I sat down beside him and examined the tear in my jeans. My knee was bleeding.
“Catch your breath, Al. We got five, maybe ten minutes,” Mike said around his fresh wad of gum. “They’re looking for a place to land.”
“And what happens after they land?”
“They’ll come for us on foot. They’re very determined little suckers.”
“Who are determined little suckers?”
He didn’t answer at first. He picked up a stick and commenced to jabbing it into the rocky ground.
“The Company,” he said.
“OIPEP?”
He nodded. “OIPEP.”
“Why is OIPEP trying to kill us, Mike?”
“I don’t think they’re trying to kill you, Al. It’s me they want.”
That didn’t surprise me. Mike had betrayed the knights and OIPEP, but I still didn’t understand why he had kidnapped me. Did he think I still had Excalibur?
He stood up and brushed the leaves and dirt from his butt. “Look at this! I just bought these,” he said, referring to his Dockers. “Stain-defenders!”
He turned to me. “Sorry for snatching you like that, Al, but I’m in a bad way now and like it or not, you’re the only port in this particular storm.”
“What storm? What are you talking about, Mike?”
“Well, you could say it’s all a big misunderstanding. But it’s more a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right’s doing. You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
He walked past me, deeper into the woods, without looking back.
“It’s your call, kid. Stick with me and you got a fifty-fifty chance of seeing your sixteenth birthday. Hang here and you got a hundred percent chance of having your head snatched straight through your backside.”
I followed him up the slope, and to me it sounded like we were making enough noise to wake the dead. We reached the top of the hill and now I could see the lights of the interstate about a mile to our left. To our right was the Knoxville airport. And, directly below us, the parking lot to an air freight company.
“Right where I left it,” Mike breathed. “Okay, let’s go.”
I crouched in the trees just at the edge of the little lawn that surrounded the parking lot as Mike jogged to a silver 380Z parked at the far corner of the lot. I didn’t know what the heck was going on and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know, but there was no turning back now, and I figured eventually Mike would fill me in on the details.
The Z roared to life and Mike zipped over, waving to me through the open window. I jogged out of the trees and into the lot as Mike slowed to a stop. He floored the gas as soon as my butt touched the seat.
Mike headed into the mountains, taking the Z up to eighty on the straightaways, maybe a little bit slower—but not much—on the curves.
We went through a couple of small towns in the foothills; then, right before the entrance to the national park, Mike turned onto a gravel road that seemed to wind straight up the side of a mountain. The little access road hugged the mountain on one side and a deep ravine dropped off the other. I happened to be seated on the ravine side. I closed my eyes and willed my heart not to leap out of my mouth.
Finally the car rolled to a gravel-crunching stop and I opened my eyes. We were parked in front of a log cabin sitting by itself in a clearing hacked out of the mature trees covering the mountaintop.
“Home sweet home,” Mike sang out and stepped out of the car. “We’re perfectly secure here. Nobody knows about this place, Al. Not even the Company, and the Company knows practically everything.”
He came around to my side of the car and stood there, like he was expecting me to get out. I didn’t.
“Get out of the car, Al,” he said.
“I’m not getting out of the car, Mike,” I said, “until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I think I told you. You’ve been extracted.”
“Why?”
He smiled. “Get out and I’ll tell you.”
I thought about it. The leaves were gray in the dark, and the cold wind made a rattling sound as it moved through them.
The lights were on inside the cabin, and the light looked inviting and warm.
“Why can’t you tell me now, Mike?”
“Well, basically because of the car.”
“The car?”
“It’s brand-new.” He pulled the gun from his belt and pointed it at my forehead.
“Out. Now.”
I got out. Mike took a couple of steps back and gestured toward the cabin with the Glock.
“After you, Al. March.”
As I trudged up the hill toward the bright, warm lights, the hair on the back of my neck stuck up and I realized then what a terrible mistake I had made getting out of the car. It’s brand-new, Mike had said. Why did that matter? Because he didn’t want to mess it up when he shot me.
From behind me he said, “Okay, that’s good.” We were about ten feet from the front porch. I stopped. He stopped. I shivered in the cold air.
“Don’t turn around, Al,” Mike said softly. “It’s better if you don’t turn around. Maybe you should kneel.”