Furious

30

Kris was up as first light filled the lodge. She cooked bacon, without burning it, and scrambled eggs. That brought a complaint from Penny that there was no way to mangle scrambled eggs. Kris cut her off like a good slave driver by pointing at the diagram of Longknife Towers. They went over it until they could talk their way through it without their computers’ flashing a map on the wall in front of them.

If things went according to plan, they would be at Al’s suite twenty minutes from leaving the loading dock. But all three of them knew that matters rarely went according to plan—on black ops or white.

So they sat around the fire trying to think of everything that could go wrong and what they’d do when it did. It was kind of fun. Each took a turn playing the red team and punching a hole in their plan. Then all of them would have to come up with a solution.

It worried Kris how easy it was to make their plan go off the rails. And while they always came up with something that would put it back on track, most of the solutions looked pretty flimsy to Kris. Hope was not a strategy, but it sure looked like they were counting on hope and lots of good luck to get them through this.

Lunch was sandwiches. They ate in silence. Meal done, Kris stood.

“Let’s get in our disguises,” she said.

“You know something I don’t know?” Jack asked.

“Nope. It’s just the hairs on the back of my neck are beginning to stand up.”

“Mine, too,” Penny said.

“If both of your feminine intuition is ringing a bell, this guy is listening.”

“We’ll need new disguises,” Penny pointed out, as they surveyed the wreckage of their old covers. “Nobody would hire Ms. Travaford for a guard job.”

“We all need to not look like ourselves, Jack included,” Kris said. “I put the chances that we’re not all being hunted as zed or worse.” That got nods.

They opened the suitcases Harvey had packed for them. Oversized middle-class work clothes poured out of one. The second held nearly as much makeup and padding material as Abby had provided.

“Does everybody want me fat?” Kris cried in dismay.

“Kris, you are a lovely lady of light and delicate proportions,” Jack began diplomatically. “How else do we disguise you?”

He paused for a moment, then got a big grin on his face. “Well, there was that time on Turantic when you didn’t wear much at all.”

“Yes, you enjoyed that. Don’t tell me you didn’t. I felt the proof on my leg.”

“I had to get close to you.”

“People, people,” Penny said. “You’re scandalizing this poor girl, and I really don’t think we have time to waste on distant, if very fond, memories.”

They busied themselves with different disguises. Penny and Jack worked over Kris, much to her own dismay. Then Kris and Jack did the same to Penny. Finally, both girls got to take a swing at Jack. He refused several of their initial suggestions.

In the end, all of them put on weight, just not as much as Kris had before. All their faces changed, from brow to nose to mouth, and foreheads got narrowed as armored wigs went on. Jack would likely be ordered to get a haircut by their new boss, but he certainly didn’t look like a Marine anymore.

Kris was the one that discovered the C-16. It was carefully wrapped and nestled next to an explosive sniffer that assured them that there was no boom stuff here. Move along.

There were also several flash bang grenades of different persuasions. Finally, from the bottom of the last suitcase, came three plastic automatics. All gave them the option of deadly force or sleepy darts. Kris set all three for sleepy and fired a dart from each into a support post. The darts hung there, not all that deep in the wood.

“No casualties tonight,” she said, handing the weapons over to her team.

“Just make sure the other guys chop on that order,” Penny said.

The explosives and grenades disappeared into various portions of their disguise. Kris had to sit down three times before she was comfortable with the placement of her weapons load.

It was just past two o’clock when Kris surveyed their preparations and found them good. She glanced around the mess they’d made of the lodge and felt a strong need to be somewhere else. “Let’s move out, folks. Someone once told me a moving target is harder to hit. I say let’s beat feet.”

Kris and Penny grabbed their purses and, without a backward glance, left.

Twenty minutes later, going well below the posted speed limit, they passed a convoy of dark SUVs roaring along in the opposite direction.

Penny kept driving. Kris followed the putative police rigs, and found herself looking at Jack in the backseat. Ever the gentleman, he was doing yoga in its small space. Their eyes met.

“How much you want to bet me,” Jack said, “the folks in those rigs really want to make our acquaintance?”

“No bet,” Kris said through a grin. “I can’t bet. Remember, I’m just a poor, homeless waif.”

“Thank God both of us felt the strong urge to be homeless again,” Penny said, and kept driving.

* * *

Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile surveyed yet another empty hideout. He was getting very tired of being one step behind the Longknife princess.

“Boss, you need to see this,” Leslie said, waving him over to look at a six-by-six post that supported the roof. Three darts stuck out of the wood. Leslie pried one out and lifted it to the light.

“They’re sleepy darts, sir. They have a coating on the tip of the dart that should put anyone it hits to sleep. Princess Longknife’s troops have used them a lot.”

“So they won’t kill you,” Foile grumbled.

“Not if you don’t have a bad heart or fall asleep in the bathtub. They are a weapon of less than lethal intent, but they’re still a weapon.”

“Three darts,” Foile counted. “So likely three less than deadly guns on our three fugitives.”

“A good guess, sir.”

“Have shots been fired in this place?” Foile said, raising his voice in an omnidirectional question to the forensic team now taking the place apart.

“Shot or shots were fired. Strangely, not a lot of residue,” one CSI investigator with a large black box announced. “No evidence of high explosives, though. Certainly nothing here to qualify this as a terrorist location.”

Foile chose to ignore the additional information. No doubt it would come out in the media. “Would the low residue fit the sleepy dart hypothesis?”

The CSI investigator nodded.

“When did they leave?” was another wide-open question to the experts.

“Somebody had lunch and didn’t eat the crusts of their bread,” a CSI type at the table announced.

“Someone stoked the fire for us,” Mahomet reported from where he was warming his hands by it. He’d led the outside search team and looked frozen.

“Anything outside?” Foile asked.

“The great outdoors,” his chilly agent replied. “No car, so they’re likely on the move back to town. Other than that, nothing since last night’s snow but a few footprints between here and the garage.”

“Clean as a whistle,” came from the head of the CSI team. “There is evidence of sexual activity in front of the fireplace. A lot of it. Some fresh.”

Leslie got a big grin on her face.

“Not a word,” Foile ordered sternly. “The Prime Minister will not learn of any of this; nor will the media.”

“Yes, boss, but a girl’s got the right to be glad when another girl gets lucky.”

“Yes, but you can store your grin. This girl has the job of checking out every surveillance camera between here and town. I want to know where they’re headed.”

“Sir, I told you there are not a lot of cameras between here and town, and the snow made all of them lousy.”

“Well, it’s not snowing right now. Hunt, my fine agent, hunt.”