Patriot Acts Read online

  I said as much to Alena.

  “Agreed,” she said, then went for her bag, pulling the MacBook from within. “Curtains.”

  I went to the windows. Our view wasn’t bad, given that there wasn’t much to it, at least, not yet. It was almost full dark outside now, the overcast sky helping the night’s approach, and streetlamps had already come on. I could see the expanse of the parking lot, see the Outback parked where we had left it, and then, across Elk, the lot of the minimall, likewise illuminated. As I watched, the first car arrived, cutting its siren as it pulled in across the street. Red and blue flashed off the sheen of ice on the ground, bounced from the glass of nearby windows.

  I closed the curtains, then moved to the bathroom. There was no window, not even a tiny one. I came back to find Alena at the desk, searching the drawers furiously.

  “No way out the back,” I told her. “Which, I suppose, means no way in, either. And we sure as hell aren’t leaving by the front door, not unless we’re in custody, at least.”

  “The Ethernet cable,” she told me. “I can’t get a wireless signal. There should be a cable in the closet or somewhere.”

  I snapped back the bifold doors on the closet, came eye-to-eye with a small clear plastic bag dangling from the clothes rod. I didn’t bother to unhook it, just tore the bag loose and tossed it to Alena. She freed the cable, plugged it into the cable modem on the desk, and opened the Web browser.

  “Do we have a plan?” I asked her.

  “I’m working on one. The response—what are we facing?”

  I moved past her at the desk, back to the window, and parted the curtains enough to peek out. The lot across the street was filling with emergency vehicles, and as I watched, a SWAT van pulled in to join the others. I wasn’t hearing any helicopters, but that didn’t mean there weren’t going to be any; only that they hadn’t arrived on-scene yet.

  “SWAT just pulled up,” I told her. “I’d guess at ten minutes before they cut the power.”

  “The news showed the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.”

  “They’ll have been notified,” I agreed. “The Feds will want to run the show, which means they’ll put the brakes on the locals, keep them from rushing us, even if they were inclined to do that, which I doubt. How many people in Lynch, you think?”

  “Twenty thousand? Perhaps thirty?”

  “Not a big SWAT team, then, and probably not a lot of experience on it, either. They’ll do it by the book, all the more so because they think we’re so damn dangerous. SWAT tactics are universally the same. They evacuate the immediate area, form a perimeter, and then wait. They’ll try to negotiate us out, especially if they believe we’re in possession of a chemical or biological agent.”

  “Don’t forget the federal response.”

  “I don’t know DHS’s reach,” I said. “Figure they’ll scramble a major unit on us, maybe a Delta Squad, maybe the Hostage Rescue Team out of Quantico. So four hours, maybe five before they can reach us.”

  “Longer, I’d think. Closer to eight. They have to deploy, then transport, then arrive on site, then redeploy.”

  “Speaking of which,” I said. The SWAT team in the lot outside the Get N Go was scrambling, men with rifles running beneath the lights in several directions at once. I tried to get a count of what I was seeing, and it confirmed what I had suspected. It wasn’t a large team. On the basis of that, then, they’d secure the perimeter before trying to convince us to come out. Whatever they had for the breaching team, if they decided to come in and take us by force, I didn’t know. Before I pulled back from the window, I caught sight of a news van approaching.

  “Local media’s arrived.”

  “Good for them. The SWAT team, did they have night-vision?”

  “Couldn’t tell.”

  “We’ll need to know,” she said.

  I considered, then reached for the remote control and showed it to her. She actually grinned.

  “Very clever,” she told me.

  I shoved the remote into my back pocket, moving to look over her shoulder at what she’d been doing with the laptop. Apparently, she’d been Googling Wyoming airports.

  “We’re going to need an airport,” she explained to me. “Preferably an international one.”

  “The idea being to convince them that we’re still here while we’re actually on a plane to parts unknown?”

  “If we are quick, it will work. They will not breach the room unless provoked or until they have no other choice.”

  I was at the bureau beneath the television, now, yanking open the drawers. The television was still rambling news, and for the time being, it seemed, wasn’t talking about us. That wouldn’t last much longer. If the initial story was national, then the addition to it currently playing out in Lynch sure as hell would be, too. I kept searching, and in the lower right-hand drawer found the phone book for Lynch, as well as a copy of Hustler.

  “Remind me to have a word with housekeeping,” I said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Never mind.” I started flipping through the listings. “Lynch has an airport, the Sweetsprings County Airport.”

  “International?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  She was typing quickly. “If we check in for international flights, we only have to clear security once before arriving at our destination.”

  “Fine, but we were going to Wilmington.”

  Alena glanced from the laptop to me, and she actually looked annoyed. “We don’t go to the destination. We get on a flight routing to Paris, say, but that requires changing planes somewhere on the East Coast—Dulles would be ideal. Then we simply walk out of the airport, rent a vehicle, proceed from there.”

  “There’s an international airport in Casper,” I said, discarding the phone book and taking a look at the ceiling. It wasn’t terribly high, just out of my reach. I tried to remember the grade of the roof, how severely it had been raked. “Probably one in Cheyenne, as well.”

  “Denver is closer,” she said. “Here, the local airport has connections to Denver. Also a flight school. That will be useful.”

  She snapped the laptop closed, then reached around and pulled the cord from the jack. While she did that, I pulled myself up on the dresser, began pushing at the ceiling. It gave with pressure, and as soon as I verified that, I punched at it. My angle on it was bad, and I couldn’t get much force behind my blows, and all of the bruises on my torso came back to life when I did it. It took three tries before I broke through with my fist. Debris and dust floated down, coating my arm and face.

  “They’ll be looking for a man and a woman traveling together,” Alena said.

  I began tearing a hole in the ceiling. “We’re going to have to split up.”

  “Once we’re clear, yes. We will rejoin one another at the hotel in Wilmington, but each of us will have to travel by a different route to get there. The longer we can convince them we are still here, still trapped in this room, the more time we will have to escape, to get further away.”

  The phone started ringing.

  “You take it,” Alena told me. “You must convince them to wait, that they do not need to storm the room.”

  I hopped down from the bureau. Alena had risen, replacing her laptop in her bag, and I gave her a lift up to where I had just been standing. She resumed widening the hole I’d made in the ceiling, working slowly to keep her efforts silent as I went to answer the phone.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Morse? This is Bobby Galloway with the Lynch Police Department. I’m here to help you.”

  “You’re what?” I asked.

  “I’m here to help you.”

  “What makes you think I need your help, Mr. Galloway?”

  “Well, Chris, it seems there are some people who think that there was this incident in Montana a few days ago involving some law enforcement officials,” Bobby Galloway told me, using his best hostage-negotiation voice. It wasn’t bad, pleasant and with a definite
promise of friendship. “We’d really like to get that sorted out. There’s a lot of confusion about what happened back there.”

  “Not from where I’m standing.”

  “That’s the thing, there are always two sides to every story.”

  “You want to help me so much, why do I think that if I open my curtains and look out the window I’m going to be seeing the SWAT team surrounding this hotel?”

  “Well, Chris, unfortunately things have gone beyond where I can just come over there and chat with you. We’re going to need to bring you down to the station, try to sort this out there.”

  “You’re going to arrest me?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, we do have a warrant for your arrest, Chris. We also have a warrant for Danielle’s arrest. We’ve been told that she may have been wounded, is she doing okay, does she need any medical attention, anything like that?”

  I took a second, trying to get my thoughts ordered as quickly as possible. So far, Bobby Galloway was proving himself to be a very good negotiator, better than I’d expected given the circumstance and the location, and that meant I was going to have to be very careful in what I said to him. Asking about Alena was mining, trying to gather intelligence.

  Galloway had the potential to become our greatest ally, if I could convince him that he had control of the conversation, that he could keep me talking, and more, keep me willing to talk to him. That would be ideal, because it would allow him to turn to his superior, his chief of police or whoever, and say the same, that he could keep us from being a danger to ourselves and the community, that he could keep us stable until HRT or whoever arrived. That maybe he could get this resolved peaceably, without needing to storm the room.

  He could buy us the time we needed to get away.

  “Chris? Is Danielle doing okay?” Galloway asked.

  “She’s fine,” I told him. “She’s more than fine, she’s never been better.”

  “How about you? Are you injured at all? Do you need any medical assistance?”

  “I’m doing fine,” I said. Then I added, “I’ve got everything I need right here with me.”

  It was a deliberate opening, and he took it, but he took his time. A worse negotiator would have jumped on the line like a politician on a vote, but Bobby Galloway waited almost three seconds before speaking.

  “Yeah? What do you have in there that’s so helpful, Chris?”

  “Don’t you worry about what I have or what I don’t,” I snapped. “I’ve got everything I need, that’s all you need to know.”

  “All right.”

  I let a pause start, then, trying to sound pissy, said, “Can I ask you a question? Am I allowed to ask questions, here?”

  It was as calculated on my part as anything he had said on his, because I was giving him exactly what every good negotiator wants to hear: I was giving him power. Three minutes into the conversation at the most, and psychologically—at least from where Galloway was standing with his headset and his paper cup of coffee at the mobile command post across the street—I’d turned the first corner he wanted me to take. I had asked his permission, and that meant that I’d put him in control.

  “Sure, Chris,” Galloway said. “Go ahead.”

  “You guys want to arrest me, why don’t you just come up to the door and come and get me?”

  “Thing is, the information I’ve been given says that you two have some dangerous stuff up there. That you’ve got some firearms and ammunition, like that, maybe even something that could make a lot of people really sick.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, coming up here would probably be a bad idea, Bobby. It would probably make a whole lot of people a whole lot more than just sick.”

  “There you go, that’s what’s got us where we are, here,” Bobby Galloway said. “You want to tell me about what happened in Montana? You want to talk about that?”

  “No.”

  “This is a good opportunity, Chris, this is a good chance for you to tell your side of things, you hear what I’m saying? There are always two sides, it’s like I said, and from where we’re sitting out here, I mean, it looks like you’re the bad guy, so it would be good to hear your side. You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I’m sure,” I told him. “I’ve got nothing to say about Montana.”

  To my side, Alena had finished clearing the hole in the ceiling, just wide enough now that I could fit through it. She quietly dropped from the bureau, took the last chunk of debris and set it on the floor, then began clearing off the other pieces she’d pulled from where they rested on the bed.

  “All right, Chris,” Galloway said, after a moment. “I’m going to take a couple minutes here and consult with my superiors, maybe use the bathroom, get another cup of coffee. You should think about what I’ve said, see if we can’t work this out.”

  “Sure,” I said, but it went into dead air, he’d already disconnected. I did likewise.

  “He hung up?” Alena asked.

  I nodded. “He’s pretty good.”

  She motioned to the remote control. “Shall we?”

  “Yeah, let’s see if that brings him back.”

  I handed Alena the remote and she moved to the window, crouching down to one side before sliding it between the fabric and the glass. She pressed several of the buttons together, as if trying to control some distant television.

  The phone began ringing again.

  “Guess they’re wearing night-vision,” I said.

  “I guess they are.” She came off her haunches and set the remote back on the dresser beside the television. Remote controls use infrared light to send their commands to whatever it is they’re commanding. By its nature, it’s outside the visible spectrum, but not when using night-vision. When using night-vision, it shows up like what it is—a nice, bright pulse of light. Multiple buttons meant that there had been multiple pulses at multiple frequencies.

  Seen by someone on the perimeter, maybe by several someones, it had made an unexpected and potentially alarming light show, because there was a very good chance they had no idea of its source. Galloway, maybe getting himself his cup of coffee, but just as likely reviewing his notes and consulting with his bosses, had been urged to get back on the phone and find out just what the hell we were doing in there.

  “Goddammit,” I said when I answered. “What?”

  “Just checking that everything’s all right in there,” Galloway said. “You two still okay? Something happen?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” I demanded. “This is bullshit. I want to talk to somebody in charge. That’s what I want. You put your boss on. I want to talk to him.”

  Over the phone I could make out voices speaking in the background. None of them sounded like Galloway.

  “Don’t ignore me, Bobby,” I said sharply. “Don’t ignore me, man, you don’t want to do that.”

  “I’m not ignoring you,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, Chris, there’s no one else available. You’re sure everything’s all right in there?”

  “Everything’s just fine. Everything’s just great, why are you asking, you think everything’s not fine and great?”

  “Just checking with you, that’s all.”

  “We’ve got everything we need in here, I told you that. Don’t play games with me, Bobby, I don’t like it. I don’t want you playing games with me.”

  “I’m dealing with you straight, Chris. No games.”

  “No games.”

  “So how are we going to get you out of this, Chris? You and Danielle, how are we going to get you to come on out so nobody gets hurt?”

  “We’re not going to hurt anybody. That’s not why we’re here.”

  “You know, I think that you mean that, I really do. Maybe you can do something to demonstrate that to us. Maybe you can hand over some of your weapons, or some of the powder you have up there—”

  “And how am I supposed to do that? I just open the door and drop it out front? I don’t want yo
u guys coming up here, I don’t want you coming near here. I want you to go away, that’s what I want.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Chris. We can talk about anything else you want, but we’re not leaving, that’s not even on the table, it’s not even in consideration, you get me?”

  “Fuck you,” I said, and hung up on him, then moved over to Alena, who was once more back atop the dresser. I braced myself against the furniture, and she put a foot on my shoulder, then stepped up and pulled herself into the crawl space between the ceiling and the roof.

  “How’s it look?” I asked.

  Her voice came back soft, a little muffled. “Cold. There’s insulation. The shingles look like composite.”

  The phone started ringing again.

  “We’re going to need more time,” she told me.

  “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” I said.

  “Listen, I’ve got to tell you something.” Galloway sounded concerned. “You’re not going to like this, but I think you need to hear it, and I’m hoping you’ll take it well.”

  “You don’t want to come up here,” I said.

  “The guys that are running this show out here, they’re getting some grief, Chris. It’s twenty degrees out here, it’s dark, we’ve got the media watching this play out. You got your television on? You can see it, we’re on the television. And my bosses, they’re saying they’re going to cut your power. No reason you should be comfortable and warm and have light in there when we don’t. So we’re going to put you and Danielle in the dark, and it’s going to get cold up there pretty fast.”

  “You do what you have to do,” I said. “You do what you have to do, but I got over being afraid of the dark a long time ago. I’m hanging up now, I don’t want to hear from you right now. You can call me back in an hour, maybe we can talk then.”