The helicopter passed directly over the Methodist church, its rotor wash rattling the ancient slates on the steeple and sending a cascade of dust and debris down through the crypt's ventilation shaft. Evelyn pressed herself flat against the cold stone floor, her hand instinctively covering the files spread before her. Beside her, Calloway had extinguished the emergency lantern, plunging them into a darkness so complete that she could not see her own fingers in front of her face.
No one breathed. No one moved. The helicopter hovered for a long, agonizing minute, its searchlight sweeping across the graveyard outside, its beam cutting through the narrow gaps in the crypt's ventilation grates like a blade of white fire. Then, with a roar that shook the foundations of the church, it banked westward and moved on.
"Search pattern," Calloway whispered in the darkness. "They're grid-searching the island. It won't be long before they find us."
"Or before the Coast Guard finds them," Evelyn replied, her voice steadier than she felt. "A black helicopter with no markings, flying over U.S. territory in the aftermath of a storm? Someone will notice. Someone will respond."
"Assuming anyone is looking."
Hannah relit the lantern, and the crypt flickered back into dim visibility. Thorne had fallen into a fitful sleep on his cot of blankets, his breathing shallow and his face pale beneath the gray stubble that had grown over the past three days. Reyes sat with his back against a stone sarcophagus, his bound hands resting in his lap, his expression unreadable.
Evelyn studied him for a long moment. "Augustus Draven. You said he's been Deputy Secretary for three years. How deep does this go? How many people inside Homeland Security know about the program?"
Reyes shook his head slowly. "It doesn't matter how many know. What matters is that the program has existed for seventeen years under four different administrations. It's been authorized, reauthorized, funded, and protected by people in both parties. It's not a conspiracy, Ms. Cole. It's policy. It's the way things are done."
"Policy," Calloway spat. "You keep using that word. Policy is a memo. Policy is a regulation. What I saw in those cells wasn't policy. It was evil."
"I'm not going to argue semantics with you."
"No, you're going to sit there and bleed and wait for your friends to rescue you."
Reyes smiled thinly. "They're not my friends. They're my colleagues. And they won't rescue me. They'll sanitize the site. That includes eliminating anyone who knows too much." He shifted his gaze to Evelyn. "Including you. Including the colonel. Including everyone in this crypt. The only question is whether the Coast Guard arrives before the containment team finishes its sweep."
As if in answer, the sound of gunfire crackled through the air—distant, muffled by stone and earth, but unmistakable. It was coming from the direction of the harbor. The vigilantes, Evelyn realized. The containment team had found them.
"How many people are still in the town?" she asked.
"Dozens," Hannah said, her voice tight with fear. "The fishermen who weren't part of the vigilantes. Their families. The old people who refused to leave. The children."
"Bridger was supposed to call them off. He was supposed to get them to safety."
"Bridger is a coward and a traitor. He probably ran the moment the shooting started."
More gunfire, this time closer. Evelyn made a decision. "We can't stay here. If the containment team is moving through the town, they'll search this church eventually. We need to get to the harbor. We need to find a boat."
"The boats were all damaged in the storm," Calloway said. "And the ferry won't run for days."
"Then we find something that floats and we take our chances. The Coast Guard is out there somewhere. If we can get far enough from the island, we can signal them."
Thorne stirred on his cot, his voice a dry rasp. "There's a Zodiac. In the boathouse below the garrison. It was for emergency evacuations. Hard shell. Reinforced hull. It should have survived the storm."
"Can you make it to the boathouse?"
"I can make it. I have to."
Hannah knelt beside her son and pressed her hand to his forehead. "You're burning up. You need a hospital, not a boat."
"I need to get off this island. We all do." Thorne struggled to sit up, his face contorting with the effort. "The boathouse is on the eastern shore, below the garrison cliffs. There's a path that leads down from the old gun emplacements. The containment team won't know about it."
"They know about the bunker," Evelyn pointed out. "They'll know about the boathouse."
"Not this one. It was decommissioned in the 1980s. Removed from all the maps. My father showed it to me when I was a boy. He said every commander keeps one escape route that no one else knows about. This was his."
Evelyn looked at the faces around her—Thorne, gray and sweating and barely conscious; Hannah, fierce and frightened and unbroken; Calloway, grim and steady and ready to fight; Reyes, bound and bleeding and watching everything with those calculating eyes. Five people against a professional containment team. Five people carrying the evidence that could bring down a cabinet secretary.
"We move in five minutes," she said. "Calloway, take point. Hannah, stay with Thorne. Reyes stays with me."
"And if he tries to run?" Calloway asked.
"He won't run. He knows that if he runs, the containment team will shoot him just as readily as they'll shoot us. He's made himself expendable."
Reyes's smile flickered, but he said nothing.
The old gun emplacement was a concrete bunker perched on the cliffs above the eastern shore, its cannon long since removed, its embrasures gaping empty at the gray sea. The path that led from it down to the boathouse was little more than a goat track, narrow and crumbling and slick with rain. They descended in single file, Calloway first with his shotgun ready, then Thorne leaning heavily on Hannah's shoulder, then Reyes stumbling and wincing, then Evelyn bringing up the rear.
The sea below was still rough, whitecaps stippling the surface as far as the eye could see, but the wind had dropped to a stiff breeze, and the clouds were breaking apart, revealing patches of cold blue sky. The storm was over. The reckoning was about to begin.
The boathouse was a low wooden structure built into a cleft in the cliff, its timbers gray with age and its roof sagging beneath a layer of storm-tossed seaweed. The door was padlocked, but Calloway shattered the lock with a single blow from his shotgun stock. Inside, the Zodiac hung from a davit, its hull intact and its motor still attached.
"It's got fuel," Calloway said after a quick inspection. "Enough to reach the mainland if we're careful. More than enough to reach a Coast Guard cutter."
"Can you pilot it?"
"I've been fishing these waters for forty years. I can pilot anything that floats."
They hauled the Zodiac down the davit and into the water, the hull slapping against the waves with a sound that seemed impossibly loud. Evelyn helped Thorne into the boat, then turned to Reyes.
"You next. And if you try anything—"
"You'll shoot me. I know." Reyes climbed awkwardly into the Zodiac, his bound hands making the task difficult. "You keep threatening to shoot me, Ms. Cole. But you haven't yet. I'm beginning to think you don't have it in you."
"Don't test me."
Evelyn was the last to board. Calloway started the motor, and it coughed to life with a sputter and a cloud of blue smoke. The Zodiac pulled away from the boathouse and nosed into the choppy water, the cliffs of Cormack Island rising behind them like the walls of a prison.
For the first time in three days, Evelyn felt something that might have been hope.
And then the helicopter rose over the cliffs.
It came from the west, skimming low over the ridge where the garrison still smoldered, its rotors thumping a rhythm that Evelyn felt in her chest. It was the same black helicopter, unmarked and predatory, and it was heading directly toward them.
"Down!" Calloway shouted, cutting the motor. "Everyone down!"
The Zodiac bobbed in the waves, its gray hull blending with the gray water. Evelyn pressed herself flat against the rubber floor, the files from Site Hydra clutched against her chest. Beside her, Thorne groaned, his injured arm jostled by the sudden movement. Hannah threw herself across her son, shielding his body with her own.
The helicopter passed overhead, so low that Evelyn could see the rivets on its underbelly and the faces of the men peering down from its open doors. It circled once, twice, its searchlight sweeping the water. Then, apparently satisfied that the Zodiac was just another piece of storm debris, it banked eastward and disappeared toward the harbor.
"They didn't see us," Calloway breathed. "They thought we were wreckage."
"Or they're heading to intercept the Coast Guard," Evelyn said. "We need to move. Now."
The motor coughed again and then roared, and the Zodiac leaped forward, its bow cutting through the waves with a spray of salt water. Behind them, Cormack Island grew smaller, its black cliffs and burned garrison and abandoned town receding into the gray distance. Ahead, the open sea stretched toward the horizon, empty and indifferent.
They had been running for twenty minutes when Evelyn saw the ship.
It was a cutter, white and orange, the distinctive colors of the Maritime Protection and Rescue Service. It was steaming toward Cormack Island from the south, its bow cutting through the waves, its decks bristling with antennae and rescue equipment. On its side, in letters large enough to read from half a mile away, was its designation: MPRS RESOLUTE.
"The Coast Guard," Hannah said, her voice cracking with relief. "They got the transmission."
Calloway altered course, steering the Zodiac toward the cutter. Evelyn pulled the signal flares from the emergency kit and fired one into the sky, a streak of red against the gray clouds. A moment later, she fired another. Then a third.
On the deck of the Resolute, figures were moving. A searchlight swept across the water and found them, pinning the Zodiac in a circle of white light. A voice boomed across the water from the ship's loudspeaker, distorted by the wind but still intelligible.
"Unidentified vessel, this is the Maritime Protection and Rescue Service. State your identity and your purpose."
Evelyn grabbed the radio handset from the Zodiac's emergency kit and pressed the transmit button. "MPRS Resolute, this is journalist Evelyn Cole. I have aboard Colonel Maddox Thorne, who requires immediate medical attention. I also have evidence of a federal crime and a witness who can testify to it. We are requesting immediate extraction and protection."
A long pause. Then: "Acknowledged, Zodiac. Approach the starboard side. We'll lower a ladder."
The Resolute loomed above them as Calloway guided the Zodiac alongside. A rope ladder tumbled down, and crew members in orange rescue gear descended to help. Thorne was lifted first, his unconscious form cradled in a rescue sling. Then Hannah, then Reyes, who was immediately seized by two crew members and escorted to the deck. Then Calloway, who climbed the ladder with the ease of a man who had spent his life at sea.
Evelyn was the last to leave the Zodiac. She climbed the ladder one rung at a time, her pack heavy with files, her body heavy with exhaustion. When she reached the deck, a young officer in a crisp uniform was waiting for her.
"Ms. Cole? Captain Demarest would like to speak with you on the bridge."
"Of course." Evelyn straightened her coat and followed the officer across the deck, her legs unsteady on the solid steel after so many days on land.
The bridge of the Resolute was a temple of order and technology, its walls lined with screens and instruments, its crew moving with the quiet efficiency of long practice. Captain Demarest was a woman in her fifties, her gray hair cropped short, her face weathered by decades of sea duty. She stood at the central console, studying a radar screen with an expression of concern.
"Ms. Cole," she said without turning around. "I received a partial transmission about eighteen hours ago. It contained files—personnel records, transfer orders, photographs of what appeared to be a detention facility. Is that your doing?"
"Yes. I transmitted from a bunker on the island. The signal was interrupted before it could complete."
"The transmission was corrupted. We received enough to know something was wrong, but not enough to understand what." Demarest turned to face her. "I'm hoping you can explain."
Evelyn set her pack on the console and began pulling out the files. "This is going to take a while. And before I start, I need to ask you something."
"Ask."
"The helicopter. The black one. Did you intercept it?"
Demarest's expression flickered. "What helicopter?"
Evelyn felt the cold return to her chest. "There was a helicopter. Unmarked, black. It was searching the island. It passed right over us before we reached your ship. You didn't see it on radar?"
Demarest turned to one of her officers. "Ensign, check the radar logs. Look for any aircraft in the vicinity in the past hour."
The ensign tapped at his console for a moment, then shook his head. "Nothing, Captain. No aircraft within fifty nautical miles of our position. Just a fishing trawler heading east, about ten miles out."
Evelyn stared at the radar screen, at the empty sea around them. The helicopter had been real. She had seen it, heard it, felt its rotor wash on her face. But according to the Resolute's instruments, it had never existed.
"Captain," she said slowly, "I think we need to talk about what's really happening on that island. And I think we need to do it now, before that helicopter comes back."
Demarest looked at her for a long moment, her weathered face unreadable. Then she nodded. "My ready room. Five minutes. Bring your files."
Evelyn gathered her pack and followed the captain off the bridge. Behind her, through the windows, she could see Cormack Island shrinking into the distance, a dark smudge on the horizon. Somewhere on that island, the containment team was still searching. And somewhere out at sea, a black helicopter had vanished from radar as if it had never been there at all.
But the files were real. The evidence was real. And the truth, whatever it cost, was about to come out.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!