Chapter 47
Peter
With two minutes to spare, Peter turned the Tahoe onto the service road for the enormous outlet mall.
Its vast parking area was bounded on two sides by a band of wetland and the cloverleaf intersection of two state highways.
The other two sides were lined with fast-food restaurants, a movie theater, and a Walmart superstore.
Forty acres of discount retail, Peter thought.
American as apple pie. And all of that was just a single node in a seemingly endless sprawl of freight warehouses, corporate distribution centers, big box stores, airplane parts manufacturers, construction supply wholesalers, stacked shipping containers, and semi-trailer sales offices, all the ugly essentials that made the modern economy function.
According to Circuit Rider’s Telegram message, the meet was in the farthest corner of the lot, where the oily runoff from all that blacktop drained into a series of retention ponds. Peter pulled over by the guardrail and turned on his flashers as instructed. Night was coming on.
The rain fell in buckets. On the far side of the guardrail, the retention pond gleamed darkly under low clouds, its surface dimpled like hammered iron.
The mall itself was at least four hundred feet away and there were no other cars visible from that part of the lot.
Either the place had fallen on hard times or the mall’s designer had vastly overestimated the amount of parking required.
He didn’t know for sure if Durant was actually involved with the Messenger and Circuit Rider.
But assuming he wasn’t got Peter nowhere.
Assuming he was, Peter still had no clue how much of what Durant had told him was actually true.
Whether the investigation into the murders at the motel truly was ongoing, or even whether there was a warrant out for Peter’s arrest because he hadn’t left Ellie with the social worker.
After hanging up with June, he’d reached out to Detective Kitzinger again.
She still wasn’t picking up, but he was able to leave a long message detailing everything they’d learned, including the contents of the cassette tape, the burner phone, Durant’s possible involvement, Ellie and Carlotta’s kidnapping, and Peter’s plan to trade himself for their safety.
He tried not to sound too much like a guy wearing a tinfoil hat.
He also gave her June’s number and said she had a copy of the recording.
Peter hoped Kitzinger was a good enough cop to follow up, regardless of orders from her boss.
He was doing his best not to think about handing himself over to these assholes.
The white static wasn’t happy. Peter assumed Sanjay Mishra was dead, which meant they’d killed at least three people to make this happen.
Peter was betting there were others. Like most soldiers Peter knew, his greatest wartime fear was not that he might get killed, shot, or blown up, but that the enemy would take him captive.
There were too many online videos of jihadis torturing prisoners before beheading them.
In every mission on every deployment, Peter had made a point to keep one last bullet set aside for himself.
So he could control the manner of his own death.
He was no longer at war, but that same fear remained with him. The fear of being helpless and alone at the hands of bad people.
—
In the distance, a pair of headlights made the same turn onto the service road that Peter had made. Half-hidden by the rain, it headed directly for him. After a few moments it resolved itself into a black Bronco with big knobby tires and fog lights mounted on the roof.
Peter got out of the Tahoe to watch them approach, making sure his empty hands remained visible. The sheeting rain beat down on his hood and the shoulders of his jacket. At the prospect of what was to come, the white static began to crackle up his spine like a battery under the skin.
The Bronco came to a stop twenty yards away. The passenger door opened and Durant stepped onto the pavement. He wore the same black cowboy hat and long black coat he’d worn at the motel, but now he had a heavy black pistol in his right hand.
“Take off your jacket and turn around,” he called. “Slowly.”
“I need to talk to Ellie and Carlotta,” Peter called back. “I need to know they’re free.”
“You’re not in charge, Mr. Ash.” Durant leveled the gun at Peter’s chest, then tipped his head toward the Bronco’s open door. “My friend is on the phone with the others right now. Remove your coat or the females will suffer.”
“You’d allow that to happen?”
“It was my idea,” the captain said. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
The veteran cop had been a patrolman and a detective. He had decades of practice in situations like this. His hand was steady, the gun was ready. Peter couldn’t take him down now if he wanted to. Besides, he’d left the Beretta in the Yukon.
He unzipped his jacket and let it fall. “Are you going after the tech conference?”
Durant’s mustache lifted in a slight smile.
“No, but it was fun to watch you get wound up about it. There’s far too much protection from multiple agencies.
I can’t run interference on it the way I did on the Katelyn Thorsen investigation.
Besides, it wouldn’t make a dent in the problem.
The Zuckerbergs of this world, the true tech oligarchs, will pull into the sheltered parking garage in armored limos with their security details.
You might get one of them, even two, but you’d just make martyrs out of them.
You won’t slow the march of technology. The problem is systemic.
We need a larger, more long-term solution.
Ted Kaczynski had the right idea all along. ”
“The Unabomber? What the hell happened to you, Durant? You’re a sworn officer of the law.”
“The law is a joke, Mr. Ash. Innocents fall victim and the guilty walk free. I see it every day. The world is becoming lawless. Nobody respects the police anymore. They think we’re the bad guys.
The courts prevent us from getting justice for victims. We can’t get decent recruits.
We’re paid peanuts to risk our lives for a lousy traffic stop. ”
Peter actually agreed with him on this point. Being a cop was a difficult and dangerous job. Not unlike being a soldier. But he couldn’t agree with Durant’s conclusions. “So rather than work to change things, you’re just going to fuck everything up?”
“People have tried to change things for generations. The world has only gotten worse. As ever, those with money and power think only of themselves. Do you really believe all this new technology will change that? It won’t.
It will only make things worse. Until a few men are kings and the rest of us are slaves.
The Movement’s actions will prevent that from happening.
It’s a question of morality. We’re restarting society from the ground up.
” Durant gestured with the barrel of his pistol.
“Raise your shirt and turn. I need to see if you’re carrying. ”
Peter hiked his fleece past his belly button and spun on his heel. The rain was cold on his face and neck. He knew it would soak through his fleece sweater before long. “Restarting society, huh? Sounds like ending the world as we know it. How will that make anything better?”
“People will no longer be slaves to the Industrial Machine. We know freedom won’t be easy.
We’ll have to work hard. Every individual will be responsible for the safety and well-being of everyone else.
Penalties for failure will be swift and merciless.
But the rewards will be immense. Community, purpose, and meaning.
Folks will own their lives again. They’ll be truly free.
Exactly what’s missing in the Machine world now. ”
Durant had really drunk the Kool-Aid, Peter thought. “So how will it happen, the Dark Time? What’s the plan?”
Durant’s mustache lifted again, the smile larger this time. “If the Messenger wants you to know, he’ll tell you.” He gestured with the pistol again. “Now, take off your clothes, all of them. Not a stitch remains. It’s the only way I’ll know you’re not carrying a tracker.”
“It’s forty degrees and raining.”
“Don’t worry,” Durant said. “We’ll get you wrapped up again in no time.”
Starting with his boots, Peter began to strip.
—
When he was fully naked, soaking wet, and already beginning to shiver in the swirling wind, the Bronco’s driver stepped out.
He was bulky and stiff in camouflage pants and hunting jacket that still held the creases from the packaging. He had a hungry smile on his face and a Taser in his hand. He walked toward Peter, the smile widening. “Hold still, shithead. This is going to hurt.”
He aimed and pulled the trigger. The pinpoint prongs snaked out on their thin wires and hit Peter in the sternum, right below the purple bruise from the stopped bullet.
His heart seized and he couldn’t breathe.
His chest burned from the current, his entire body rigid as every muscle clenched in excruciating agony.
The fact that he was naked and wet only increased the conductivity.
He rocked back on his heels, unable to maintain his balance.
Right before he tipped like a felled tree, the current cut out.
His heart stutter-started and his muscles released.
Then his legs collapsed and he dropped to his knees on the asphalt.
The whole thing had only taken five seconds but it felt like an eternity.
He was dimly aware of Durant holstering his pistol, then opening the back of the Bronco and returning with a heavy green canvas utility tarp. He shook out the fabric at Peter’s side. “This will warm you up,” he said.
Peter no longer needed to get warm. After the blast from the Taser, he was sweating profusely. The pain was fading but he knew he’d ache for days. He reached to remove the prongs, but the fat man triggered the Taser a second time.
Peter went rigid again, his chest on fire, his helpless heart clenched like a fist.
“You like that?” The fat man’s voice seemed distant. “Follow instructions or I’ll give you another. Or maybe just because I feel like it.”
“That’s enough, Troy,” Durant said. The voltage stopped. Peter fell forward, panting. The white static crackled into his brain, demanding that he react, fight or flight. But he knew he could do neither, not if he wanted Ellie and Carlotta to live.
“Mr. Ash, remove the electrodes and lie face-first on the tarp and cross your wrists behind your back.” Durant pulled a pair of handcuffs from his coat pocket. “I know what you’re capable of. I need to contain you. For the sake of the females.”
Peter did as he was told. His skin was on fire where the prongs had punctured. Durant knelt on his bare back and cuffed his wrists. “I told you to leave it alone, Mr. Ash. Now you pay the price. Where are the black-tips?”
“In the back of the truck.” Peter’s voice was a rasp.
Durant stood. “Your sidearm and your phone?”
“In the glove box.”
Durant nodded at Boxall, who popped the Tahoe’s hatch and carried the ammunition and the AK to the Bronco. He made a second trip and returned with Peter’s pistol, wallet, phone, and keys, which he handed to Durant.
Opening the wallet, Durant looked at the cash inside. “No way you came by this honestly.”
Peter choked out a laugh. “That’s funny, coming from you.”
Durant slid the cash into his own pocket, then threw everything else into the retention pond. “Is anybody waiting to follow us?”
“No.”
“If you’re lying, Boxall will take it out on the females. And he likes it.”
“I’m not lying.”
“We’ll see about that.” Durant took a step back and Boxall stepped in close and punched the Taser directly into Peter’s side. The pain drove all other thoughts from his head. When it was over, Durant and Boxall were pulling the tarp over him and rolling him up like a burrito.
When it was done, he could barely move. Was there enough air in this thing? At least the tarp was canvas rather than plastic. The claustrophobia closed in. He heard the sticky sound of tape coming off a roll as the canvas cinched tight above his head and below his feet.
Someone grunted and he felt himself rise into the air, then thump back down.
He was in the back of the Bronco. The white static flashed like lightning in his brain, panic rising, blinding his mind.
The Bronco lurched into motion and began to pick up speed.
Frantic, hyperventilating, his chest in a vise, he managed to remember to hold his breath.
He counted to eight, then released it slowly.
Then another breath, deeper this time, another count of eight, followed by another long, slow release.
Again, then again, and yet again. Breath by breath he settled into his mind again, not fighting the static.
Allowing it to be. Hello, old friend. Stay cool. We can handle this.
This time, instead of calling up a mental picture of the sandy beach where he and June had walked not long ago, he pictured Ellie’s face when she talked with her mom about pizza at the motel, before everything went to hell.
She looked calm and confident and safe. Even though he knew, right now, she was none of those things.
Still, seeing her, he felt his heart rate begin to slow. He had a purpose.
I’m coming, he told her. And I’ll make them pay.