In the Crosshairs

31

Swanson became aware in increments as his mind slowly adjusted to the lessening grip of the chemical sleep. Where nothingness had ruled for days, things now began creeping into his consciousness. Coastie, Lady Pat, Sir Jeff, and Double-Oh were clustered in a loose semicircle as Dr. Whyte brought him up through the final stages. An orderly monitored his vital signs.

A dreamlet was forming in the patient’s idle brain. He was underwater, coming up from a surfboard spill, held down by the force of churning water and the strong outward rush of a retreating wave. Swanson sat on the drifting sand as the ocean surged all around and through him, looking up like a seabed plant. That was interesting. There was light up there. He watched the bubbles rising from his nose and mouth being drawn automatically to the surface. He decided to follow them. It seemed nicer up there.

Breathing wasn’t a problem, even beneath the water; he thought this was very odd. He coughed several times. New air replaced the old, and his lungs filled with the fresh taste of life. Sounds filtered in, a cacophony of babel that he couldn’t understand. A powerful light stabbed into his eyes, so sharp that he jerked his head away from it.

“Waddah,” he moaned as his first word, and a cup was at his chapped lips, giving him a few sips of liquid gold. “Ahhh.”

“All good,” the orderly told the doctor.

Swanson heard, but didn’t understand. “Watter?” The cup visited again. His hearing improved and a cold wet cloth wiped gently at his eyes. He was in a room with other people.

“Kyle?” The man’s voice was an easy baritone. “Kyle, can you hear me? Shake your head if you understand me.”

“Hear.” He coughed. Sir Jeff and Double-Oh did a fist bump, while Lady Pat and Coastie hugged each other. Coastie took Kyle’s hand again. Dr. Whyte decided that tactile contact was a good thing, and that he could work around her.

“Very good.” Whyte continued. “You’re waking up from a very deep sleep. You’re safe and in good condition. There’s nothing wrong with you except for a lot of drugs that will work their way out of your system. Do not fight that.”

“Uh-hunh.”

“Good. We are aboard the Vagabond. Do you know what that is?”

“Boat.” Another cough. A bad dream crashed through his head, a deadly and roaring red demon, and he began to thrash, but his arms and feet were still secured to the bed. Coastie jumped away as if shocked by a bolt of electricity. Lady Pat grabbed her as if gentling a spooked pony.

“You’re okay, Kyle. That was a normal reaction. Relax.” The doctor pursed his lips and nodded to the orderly to let the morphine drip resume. “We’re going to let you rest a little while longer, until you adjust at a slower speed. There’s no hurry. No more nightmares.”

He faded again, but seemed comfortable, safe, and serene. “I love my Coastie,” he said to himself, bringing his mind to bear on life. But she heard it, and tears came.

Luke Gibson was in no hurry. Having cleared U.S. Customs through the ruse of shipboard persecution, he was now able to go where he wished, and America was a very big place. Time was his buddy. As long as he didn’t break the law or draw undue attention, he was good.

Using a Maine credit card provided in Susannah Lai’s packet of goodies — maybe he wouldn’t kill her after all — Gibson rented a well-used pickup truck for a week in his alias of Daniel Cabot McCabe. It had a bold round National Rifle Association sticker on the rear window. At a sporting-goods store, he outfitted himself with a camo cap and jacket and big aviator non-reflecting sunglasses. At Walmart he found underwear, jeans and four shirts, plus toiletries and other items — sneakers, work gloves, a small shovel, a flashlight, and a large backpack. Then he set out to see America on a leisurely cross-country drive aboard his 2010 Dodge Ram V8 with four-wheel drive. East, over to Interstate 5, then south to I-84 and east again into majestic landscapes dominated by national forests and by Mount Hood far to the left. A man in camo cap and shirt, his face shaded by large sunglasses and the tinted window of a pickup truck with a few dings and an NRA sticker was unlikely to draw a second glance from any cop or camera.

He somehow managed to stay awake for eight more hours and rolled safely into the mirror border towns of Clarkston, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho. The rush was on him now, sleep tugging but unimportant. Hot coffee and a few uppers were his fuel.

The smokestacks of the Potlatch and Clearwater Lumber factories regurgitated stinking clouds into the darkening sky as Gibson got his bearings in the Lewis and Clark Valley. He crossed the old drawbridge spanning the Snake River, got to East Main in Lewiston, and headed into the industrial sprawl — a rolling carpet of trash, junk, and scrap in a land with no zoning laws that might prevent a man from doing as he wished with his property

The tires crackled against the gravel of Shelter Road, and from the gloom he found the ruins of the old Sacred Heart Chapel. Its stones were slimy with moss and lichen, and it was isolated behind a rusty barbed-wire fence and a field of waste and thorns. Instead of being a place of worship, the chapel seemed to be trying to hide.

Dear old Dad, thought Gibson. The King had recognized value when he saw it, and dilapidated churches had been high on his list of hidey-holes. Local governments were reluctant to condemn them, and the religious community liked having them around. Sacred Heart had survived. Gibson shut down the truck and went in.

The senses were quick to react. The place stank of urine and feces, piled and rotting for decades. Obscene painted words had obliterated any sign of respect. The pews and the pulpit were gone, as was the roof, which had let the weather come inside. The place was a lot worse than when his father had discovered it. It was not just dilapidated, it was dead. He showed the light around, dancing it over the slag, and saw nothing. “Hey! Anybody here? Show yourself!” he hollered. Only silence came back.

Gibson held the shovel like a weapon as he moved toward the back of what had once been the nave. He walked directly to the west wall, then back five paces. One more flash around, and he started to dig. The covering of trash and debris was easy to clear, but he had to pry and pick hard to remove the joined rock of the floor.

He paused to catch his breath, then dug hard to finish. It was either still there or it wasn’t. The blade struck metal, and Gibson chipped around it, then used his fingers to extract an old metal ammunition box. Originally designed to hold several hundred rounds of .50-caliber ammo, the box had been retooled by King for his own purposes: beneath the pop-top metal lid lay a neat set of interior compartments sealed with wax. The contents were refreshed every ten years, so there was a new usable identification set, two credit cards, a thousand dollars in hundreds, fifties and, twenties, a dull silvered Ruger 9-mm. pistol and fifty clean rounds. He squatted on his boot heels and read the new ID: he was now Craig D. Abrams of Charlotte, North Carolina, a sales rep for an international computer-chip manufacturer. The only problem was that the King’s photo was on it, not that of the Prince. Gibson could alter that easily enough. He thanked his father and his grandfather, too, for having the foresight to install these little emergency caches everywhere they had put a CIA secret stash, which in this church was counted from the west wall. He pocketed the money, loaded the Ruger, and replaced the box, making a mental note to replenish it later.

With the debris haphazardly stacked back in place, Gibson gave Daniel Cabot McCabe a small, fiery sendoff.

He left the truck where it was, with the keys in the ignition. The last trace of the marine biologist who had passed through the port of Astoria would be stolen and gone by morning. Gibson flung the shovel as far as he could, and it bounced and came to rest amid the beer cans and junk. Shouldering the backpack, he made the easy walk back into town, paid a hundred dollars in cash for a nice, bland room at the Holiday Inn Express, showered, brushed his teeth, and went to sleep feeling like a new man.

The following morning, he slept late and missed the complimentary buffet, so he wandered downtown and found a real restaurant that fortified him with eggs, ham, hash browns, fresh biscuits, and strong coffee. Back to the Holiday Inn Express, and the crowd was gone, off to wherever their big recreational vehicles would travel. Gibson slid into a chair in the semi-private travelers’ business suite and logged into one of his accounts. He had been out of touch since Hong Kong, but struck gold in the first chat room, where a coded message awaited. The source was an old-timer inside the CIA:

Gibson sucked in a sharp breath. Damn. I got him! Or did I? He had butt-stroked Swanson pretty good, but to this extent? Still, what extra damage was done in the following action? Good news indeed, but inconclusive. He called up a second secret site, a private message board from a source buried within the élite community of special operators, and his heart began to sing:

Luke shut the computer down, erased the history, leaned back, and snapped his fingers with controlled joy. I got him. Not the shoot-out I wanted, but I got the bastard.

He returned to his room, gathered his belongings, and checked out of the hotel into a bright and glorious Idaho day. Number One! He stuck out his thumb beside the highway and headed east, toward Big Thunder.

The sun was high when Kyle Swanson awoke again, this time with a gentler emergence back into the real world after his drug-enforced hibernation. His lids fluttered and he coughed. There was some mild disorientation, but it gave way as life resumed. It felt as if he were being reborn, leaving a comfortable place of which he now had no memory.

Hands were holding his, Coastie on the right and Lady Pat on the left. He smiled at them. “Welcome back, boy,” called out Sir Jeff, leaning on the foot of the bed. The big frame of Double-Oh Dawkins shadowed behind them.

He just looked at all of them for a moment, taking in their presence. “Did I make it okay?” His voice was a croak.

“Don’t make such a big deal out of sleeping for a while,” grumped Dawkins. “You still have all your fingers and toes.”

Coastie leaned forward and kissed Kyle lightly on the forehead. “Everything is good,” she said.

“Hey, you really are here,” he said, taking a long look at her. “I thought I saw you earlier. Can I get some water?”

Sir Jeff told him that he’d been attended by one of the finest physician-surgeons in London, who was now on his way home. “You looked like hell, and we have pictures to prove it, but you’re fine. You may have a headache for a day or two, and an upset stomach. Otherwise, it went well.”

“Let’s not do that again, shall we?” Lady Pat squeezed his hand.

Kyle drank some water. “Did it work?”

“Who knows? We sure planted enough hard evidence and rumors. Everybody but a tight handful of friends believes you are crippled with a broken neck and expected to die.” Double-Oh crossed his arms. “We are ready to go hunting whenever you are.”

Kyle felt the gentle sway of the yacht and knew they were aboard the Vagabond. His stomach felt a bit queasy, and he closed his eyes again. “Where are we?”

Sir Jeff spoke again. “We’ve passed out of the North Sea and are nearing the Channel Islands. The captain says we’ll be in the Atlantic sometime overnight.”

“Anything on Gibson yet?” He looked at Double-Oh.

“He got away aboard an old helicopter in the Afghan fracas. Marty Atkins thinks the agency may have a lead on him in Hong Kong, but he hasn’t pinged the system.”

“So we don’t know if he’s taking the bait.” Kyle was tiring.

“Not for sure. But we certainly provided a convincing show.”

Kyle faded again, and the medical orderly stepped in to instruct that he should be left alone for a while. Reluctantly, the four of them trooped out of the cabin. The patient asked weakly, “Can I get something for sea sickness?”

“No problem,” replied the orderly. “All your vital signs are stable. You might be on your feet tonight.”

“I may puke.”

“Basket’s at your right hand.” She gave him a shot of Dramamine, then turned off the light and left the room.