Threat warning

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ryan had no idea that his head was as big as it was. Once his forearms were lodged in the opening of the window, he ducked his chin to fit through, but his nose and the crown of his head formed a wedge that blocked him from moving even an inch.

By rolling his head to the right and pressing down hard with his left cheek against the ledge, he thought there was hope that he might be able to muscle his way through. He might have to leave his ears behind, but he could make it.

Just as he started to worry about how he was going to fit the rest of his body through the opening, somebody-it had to be his mom-grabbed his legs at the knees and lifted them.

“I’ll push as you pull,” she said.

And that worked. With his head clear, his shoulders slid easily. He elbow-crawled his chest and belly clear, and once he felt his belt line against the ledge, he knew that he was home free. He pulled his legs and feet up, drew them under him, and he was free.

The feeling was overwhelming. It took his breath away. He didn’t realize how crippling the isolation of imprisonment was until he left it behind. He rolled to his stomach and turned back to the window. Before he could even ask, his mom stuffed his clothes through the opening. He pulled them through.

“Stay warm,” she said. “And be careful.”

The blackness on his mom’s side of the window was absolute. As he wrestled back into his clothes, Ryan could see nothing, yet he knew that she was watching him, depending on him. Again, words failed, so he turned away without saying anything.

There was no going back now. He was surprised that the thought brought little angst. What was, was. It was the same mental place he went to during a track meet.

He couldn’t count the number of meets he’d won when he’d had no business winning. He wasn’t the biggest, and Lord knew he wasn’t the strongest, but he was as fast as most, and if you didn’t let yourself think about defeat, it was amazing how often you could win.

He needed to get going.

Walking farther away from the house, he tried to make the night shadows jibe with his memories of the drive in on that first night, but the two were not equating for him.

We arrived in the front, he thought. I must be in the back now.

Moving even farther away, he navigated a wide circle to his left around the building. He was looking for a long tree-lined driveway leading to an elevated front porch. Once he saw that-or at least what looked like that in the darkness-then he could begin to retrace their route.

As his eyes adjusted to the night, he realized that the lack of a moon was at least partially compensated for by a sky full of stars. The edges of the shadows were surprisingly sharp, he thought, if mottled by the trees, and he realized that he would be visible to others who might have been gazing out at the night.

When he turned the second corner, he saw the porch and the long driveway. Their minivan was gone, though. In fact, there were no vehicles at all. Yellow light flickered in the windows. He had no way of knowing if there were more people inside, or if the place was empty, and he couldn’t afford the risk of checking.

His mission was to get help. If he went back to the cabin and got caught, God only knew what would happen to them, but the one thing that was guaranteed was that this opportunity for rescue would evaporate.

And then there’d never be another chance.

He had to keep going. He’d promised he’d keep going.

Dropping to a low-profile crouch, he turned his back on the cabin and moved to the cover of the trees.

His plan-if you could even call it that-was to avoid the roadbed itself because he thought he’d be too visible. Problem was, by staying off the road, he had to walk, climb and crawl through all kinds of weeds and sticks and shit, and in the process he made the noise of an advancing army. After about twenty yards of that, he made the decision to stick to the edge of the roadbed and move slowly. If a vehicle or a person came his way, he’d just have to hope for enough time to drop out of sight.

He had no idea how long he’d been walking down the driveway, but it felt like a long time. Was this the correct way to the fence? He knew they’d spent hours on the road, but he really had no idea how long they’d driven from the front gate to the cabin.

The cold was becoming a problem again, causing him to shove his hands deeply into his coat pockets. His nose ached from it, and when the wind blew, it hurt his eyes. He tried to remember what the local weatherman had said about this cold snap, but Ryan never paid any attention to the news, unless there was a possibility of schools closing.

Is anybody missing me at school? he wondered. Outside of his track team, he didn’t know many people. Come to think of it, he didn’t know that many on the track team, either. Since most of them had grown up together, there really wasn’t a lot of room for newcomers in their cliques.

He and his mom had left their real friends down in North Carolina at Fort Bragg-those were the ones who would notice they were missing, except they’d been missing since summer, when his mom had decided to come north. Other than Aunt Maggie, no one in their circle would care enough to report them missing, and Aunt Maggie was visiting a friend in France.

All the more reason for him to be heading off for help on his own.

As he trudged on, it was hard to tell if the road he was walking on was paved or if it was merely frozen dirt, but as he hunched against the cold and watched the shadows of his feet take step after step, he wished he’d thought to wear warmer socks. The cold came up through the soles of his Nikes as if he were barefoot.

He heard a voice.

His body acted instinctively, without him having to tell it a thing. He dropped to a low crouch and duckwalked quickly to the edge of the roadbed, where he fell to hands and knees along the edge of the tree line.

He heard another voice. Both were male, and neither sounded all that close. Certainly, they didn’t sound angry or threatening; just two guys having a conversation about something. Ryan couldn’t make out the words, but when one of them laughed, he felt tension drain from his shoulders. They clearly hadn’t seen him.

He wondered where they were. The night was so quiet, the air so cold and pure, and the breeze so constant, that they could have been thirty feet away or thirty yards away. Maybe even farther.

But if their sound carried so easily, so would any sound that he made. It was time to be very careful.

From where he lay in the ditch that ran along the raised roadbed, he couldn’t tell if the owners of the voices were moving or stationary. He remembered that the guards who manned the front gate carried guns, and he wanted nothing to do with any of that.

But he couldn’t just stay here. Sooner or later, he was going to lose the darkness. When that happened, it was all over.

He needed to move closer. He crawled on his belly at first-the way he saw soldiers do it in the movies-but that full-body dragging created way too much noise. He decided to risk rising to his hands and knees and advancing that way.

Once again, the cold became a real problem. Why hadn’t he thought of bringing gloves?

Yeah, he chastised silently, next time you get kidnapped, be sure to dress warmly.

By being able to place one hand and one knee at a time, Ryan was able to move far more quietly. He still made noise, but not that much more than the wind. Besides, the wind was blowing in his face, away from the people he was approaching, so that should help him be quieter, too.

At least that’s what he told himself.

He figured it took five minutes to crawl close enough to be able to see who was talking. Barely silhouettes in the darkness, they were tall enough to be adults, though to Ryan’s ears, their voices sounded young. They both wore bulky coats, and from the roundness of their heads, he assumed they were wearing stocking caps to stay warm. He envied them those. He also envied them the rifles he could see slung over their shoulders.

And then there was the good news: Beyond their silhouettes, Ryan could clearly see the outline of a fence. He’d finally made it to the edge of the property.

Now that he’d finally gotten so close, he realized how flimsy his plan was-or, more accurately, that he didn’t have a plan. Somehow, he was going to get over the fence unseen, and then somehow, he was going to find a place where he could make a phone call. That was a lot of somehow.

And all of it depended on these guys moving on. Or falling asleep. Or getting struck by lightning. For the time being, Ryan settled on becoming invisible and allowing his breathing to slow down. As the sound of blood thrumming through his ears died away, he could actually hear the words they were saying.

“… starting a war. Like any war, people are going to be killed.”

“But kids. I just don’t see how that is anything but wrong.”

“It’s about the anger. It’s about focusing it on all those godless rag heads, and so far, Brother Michael says it’s going great.”

A long pause followed-long enough for Ryan to wonder if maybe they’d moved along.

Then, “Are you willing to go that far?”

“I’m a soldier. If I have to kill, I’ll kill. If I have to die, I’ll die.”

“I don’t mean that. That’s all of us. I mean kids. You’re willing to kill kids?”

A derisive laugh. “Name me one war in the history of wars where kids didn’t get killed.”

“That’s different. It’s one thing when a bomb falls in the wrong place, or a stray bullet goes through the wrong wall. I mean, are you willing to target kids?”

“I will follow the orders that are given to me.” Another pause-a shorter one this time. “Are you saying that you wouldn’t?”

Ryan heard a distinct change in tone. “N-no, of course not. I’m just saying I’d try to find a different assignment.”

“But if you were given an order-”

“I’d do my duty.” Another long pause. In Ryan’s mind, the guy was getting defensive. “Seriously. I’m just talking here. Don’t look at me like I’m a traitor. I’m a loyal servant to the cause, just like you are.”

“You make me wonder sometimes, Brother Samuel.” The other one said this in a tone that dripped with disapproval. “Questioning leads all too easily to disloyalty. You know this.”

“Of course I know it. And Brother James, I’m sorry that I said anything. I think sometimes that I am not as strong as the others. I worry that when the time comes, I might freeze. I don’t want to be one who fails.”

Who the hell are these freaks? Ryan wondered. Brother this and Sister that. Killing children? Holy shit.

“We all have doubts,” Brother James said. “But I believe that when the time comes, our training will take over and we will do everything that is expected of us. We need to stay focused on the honor, and if we do that, the rest won’t matter.”

“Do you have your mission yet?” Brother Samuel asked.

Still another pause. “We’ve been here too long,” Brother James said. “You need to walk your route. So do I. Stay warm.”

With that, the night grew silent again.

But what did the silence mean? Ryan hoped it meant that they had wandered off, a conclusion rendered more likely by their need to “walk their routes.” He thought again of the guards he saw at the gate when they first arrived. First there were just a couple, and then more arrived. It made sense, didn’t it, that they would walk the fence line, like sentries in the POW movies?

Only one way to find out.

Ryan rose again to his hands and knees slowly and quietly, and dared to peer into the night. The spot where the guards had been standing was now empty, their cube of space now occupied by the outline of the chain-link fence against the night. The fence was the goal. The first goal, anyway. If he could make it over that, then other options existed for him. If he couldn’t, well, only one option remained, he supposed, and that one sucked.

If he tried the fence, he might get out. If he got caught trying, they’d probably kill him outright. That’s what the guns were for, right? But if he stayed, they were going to kill him anyway. The fence was the only option.

Even as he inventoried his options, he continued his slow, steady crawl toward the fence. Toward freedom. As he closed to within fifteen yards, and then ten, he fought the urge to hurry. At the ten-yard mark, he realized that the trees were all gone. An unpaved roadway of sorts had been denuded of trees on either side of the fence, presumably to allow the guards to walk their routes, just like Brother What’s-his-face had said. He remembered with a shudder how easily he’d been able to make out the details of those guards in the starlight, and now realized that the clarity came from the lack of tree cover. The lack of any cover at all.

Shit. I have to climb the fence in the open.

At the very edge of the tree line, which at this point was more scrub growth than real trees, Ryan leaned out into the cleared space. He pivoted his head first to the left, and then to the right, and there they both were, each about thirty yards away from him, but on opposite sides. They appeared to be moving away, but how could he know without being able to see faces for a reference point?

Time to find out.

Pressing himself flat against the ground, he lizard-crawled across the open space to the base of the fence. He thought to look both ways again, just to be sure, then talked himself out of it. What was it that Dad always said? In for a penny, in for a pound.

It wasn’t till he actually rose to his knees and touched the fence that he thought about the possibility that it might be electrified. It wasn’t.

Ryan slipped his fingers through the chain links and started to climb, telling himself that this was no different than climbing the fence to the athletic field on the days when he beat Coach Jackson to practice. He’d done that half a dozen times, and each time, he’d earned one of those scoldings that was really an expression of veiled admiration.

He didn’t expect one of those this time.

The hardest part was to not make any noise. Chain-link fences make a unique tinkling, clattering sound when you climb them. If the guards heard that, it would be over. Good God, there were so many ways for this to be over, and none of them were good.

He refused to look at the guards, fearing that the energy of his glance might somehow make them turn, the way that your eyes are drawn to the girl across the classroom who happens to be staring at you, or the way the teacher knows to call on you the one day out of thirty when you don’t have your homework done. Maybe if he didn’t summon their glances, things would continue to break his way.

The frigid air registered almost as hot against the exposed skin of his hands and face, and as he scaled higher, the metal chain links felt like they were somehow turning his finger bones brittle.

It took less time than he thought it would to reach the top of the fence, where a Y-shaped frame of barbed wire awaited him, daring to thwart his escape.

Not a chance. He’d already been beaten, and people were already planning his execution. Spiky wire was nothing.

At the top now, he reached up and behind with his right hand to wrap his fist around the wire, taking care to place his palm in a spot between the spikes. That done, he let go of the fence with his other hand and allowed his feet to dangle as he hand-walked upwards and backwards, hand-over-hand until he’d reached the fourth level of wire, which left him dangling free over the cleared aisleway.

A pull-up brought him chin-high to the wire, and then he faced the hard part. Squinting against what he knew was coming, he raised his left leg and hooked the wire with his ankle, where one of the spikes bit deeply into the soft meat in front of his Achilles tendon. Ignoring the pain, he gritted his teeth and hoisted his left leg parallel to the wire. Spikes found his calf and knee and thighs, and he prayed to all things holy that his junk would be spared as he heaved himself with agonizing slowness into the trough formed by the torturous Y. While his scrotum got poked, the point missed the boys, so he called that a victory.

As he lay on his back on this elevated bed of nails, staring at the sky, he paused to collect himself. The dark, negative part of him waited for the sound of gunshots to rip the night, but the rest of him pushed those thoughts away. What was going to happen was going to happen. All he could do was his best; and if his best wasn’t good enough, he’d never know it because he’d be dead.

It was time to finish the job.

He rolled to his right, this time clutching his crotch as his belt buckle and parts south passed again through the danger zone. Still in the Y, he was able to get his feet under him enough to duck into a low crouch. He wasn’t good with distances, but to his eye, he was ten or twelve feet off the ground-too far just to launch himself into the night.

He turned his hands so they were fingers down, thumbs in, and he carefully nestled his palms into another dead space between the spikes. From there, he pressed his belly against the wire and doubled over, allowing the momentum of his head and upper body to propel him into a somersault that left him dangling by his hands, his shoes maybe five feet off the ground. From there, he let go and dropped to freedom on the far side. He tried to remain limp as he hit the ground, allowing his knees to fold at the impact, and he forced a shoulder roll that left him on his stomach, flat against the ground.

Jesus, he’d made a lot of noise.

Without even thinking, he scrambled for traction with his hands and feet and he darted for the cover of the bushes on his side of the fence. He was still half a stride away when someone yelled, “Who’s there?” The voice came from the direction of Brother Samuel, but Ryan couldn’t tell for sure that it was his voice.

Powerful flashlights clicked on, and he heard the sound of running feet as the lights bounced in the air and converged at roughly the spot where Ryan had climbed the fence.

He pressed himself flat against the ground, and tried to control his breath, conscious of the telltale cloud he made with every exhalation. His heart pounded hard enough behind his breastbone to actually hurt.

“What’s wrong?” Brother James yelled. Ryan recognized that voice.

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The fence moved.”

“It moved? How would it do that?”

“I mean it moved.” The night filled with the sound of rattling chain link. “Like that.”

The darkness around him lightened as flashlight beams scoured the ground.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Brother James said. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I heard something.”

“Did you see anything?”

“ No.”

The flashlight beams scoured the ground some more. “I don’t see anything out there, either, do you?”

Brother Samuel didn’t answer as the lights played on and on.

Ryan didn’t know how much longer he could control his breathing. He lungs were screaming. He opened his eyes long enough to see that the lights were near him but not on him, and dared to cover his mouth with his hand and exhale, oh so slowly.

“There’s nothing there, Brother Samuel. Maybe it was a deer.”

“Maybe we should check with Brother Stephen and have him look in on the prisoners.”

Ryan’s heart nearly stopped.

“Right,” Brother James mocked. “They overpowered him though a locked door.”

“I’m just saying that I heard something.”

“And I’m just saying that there’s nothing out there.”

A light swung away from Ryan’s woods, and played into the woods on the other side-the area he’d just left.

“What’s wrong with you?” Brother James said.

“Maybe it was someone climbing in. We’re at war now, after all.”

“And who would do that?”

“The cops? The FBI? The army? How would I know? But if they found out-”

“Nobody’s finding out,” Brother James said. Ryan could hear the frustration in his voice. “This is just more of that same problem as before. You have no faith.”

“Not true.”

“It is true. I’m not going to report you-at least not yet-but you’re getting paranoid, and the paranoia is making you question all the unquestionables.”

“I am not! Maybe I’m a little jumpy-”

“You’re a lot jumpy,” Brother James accused. “Do you or don’t you have faith in Brother Michael and his plan?”

“Of course I do. But-”

“No, stop. No buts. If you have faith, there’s no room for buts.”

The lights returned to Ryan’s side of the fence. “I know what I heard,” Brother Samuel said.

“I’m not saying you didn’t hear anything. Just that you didn’t hear an invader. Or an escapee. You heard a deer. Or the wind.” One of the lights went out. “Now, turn that thing off before your night vision is ruined for hours.”

The light stayed right where it was. Ryan wondered if Brother Samuel was just making a point by defying the order to turn it off. Finally, darkness returned. The boys-Ryan had come to think of them as teenagers, though he didn’t know why-said some parting words, and then the night became quiet again.

Ryan lay frozen on the ground-in every sense of the word. Were they really gone, or were they sandbagging, pretending to be gone, and just waiting for him to show himself by moving? If he were them-particularly if he were Brother Samuel, who not only felt sure that he’d heard something, but had something to prove to Brother James-he’d stand there and set a trap for a while. He’d read somewhere, or maybe seen on television, that that was how snipers and countersnipers used to wait each other out during World War I and World War II. The one who lost patience first died.

With his hand cupped to his nose and mouth to disperse the clouds of breath, he forced himself to lie completely still, hoping that the hammering of his heart wasn’t audible ten or fifteen yards away.

But how long was long enough? He decided to count to five hundred, metering the rhythm in his head as one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, and on to the end. That would keep him from going too fast.

As he got to a hundred twenty-three one-thousand, he heard Brother James say, “So, can we just say that I was right?”

The sound of his voice made Ryan gasp and his skin nearly stripped itself from his skeleton. Jesus, they had been waiting.

“I guess,” Brother Samuel said. “I was just so sure.”

“Happens sometimes. In ninety minutes, we get relieved, and you can get some sleep.”

“Right,” Brother Samuel said. “Sorry for the alarm.”

This time, Ryan actually heard the footsteps as they walked away. He sent up another prayer of thanks that God had made him so paranoid.

When he could no longer hear the footsteps of the guards, he did a push-up on his frozen hands and brought himself to his knees, his back bent low. They were gone.

But they were also nervous. Brother Samuel in particular would be on a hair trigger, waiting to detect things in the night and shoot them. And Ryan was upwind now, so he needed to be that much more careful about making noise.

He needed to get the hell out of here. Distance was his only weapon.

As Ryan stood and turned his back to the compound, the starlight revealed a lighter strip along the black ground that he presumed to be the extension of the road that he’d been following all along-the road that he hoped was the same one that had brought them here.

It was time to run. It was, after all, the only thing in school that he was any good at. He needed to find the houses he saw on the way in that had electricity burning in the windows. Where there was electricity, there had to be a phone, right? And where there was a phone, help was only a police-car ride away.

Ryan took off at a jog, a thousand-meter pace, as if he were back on the track team-fast enough to outrun just about anyone if they were going for the distance, but about half the speed of the sprint he was capable of for a short spurt. The cold air filled his lungs and dried him out, making him want to cough, but he knew better than that. No sudden noises.

At least the road was paved. If he’d been on gravel, there’d be way more noise, and if he’d been on dirt, he’d have had to worry about the irregularities of surface, and of an ankle twist or a knee jam. As it was, he could run like this for hours.

It turned out that he only had to go about ten minutes. At first, he thought the specks in the distance were headlights, triggering another flash of panic; but as he slowed and got closer, he realized that he was seeing the glow of light from inside a building. Closer still, and he saw that the building was a house. A big one, atop a long hill.

Hope bloomed. His mind conjured an image of a family gathered around the television, watching one of the late-night comedy shows. Wouldn’t they be surprised as all get out when he showed up at their door and told them his story? He wondered if they had any idea of all that was going on at the compound down the road. It would have been like the Germans who lived down the street from the concentration camps. Surprises like that were the ones that no one wanted.

Except the Germans knew. Most of them, anyway, and the rest were in denial. Isn’t that what he saw on Band of Brothers? Absolutely. The American commanders made the townspeople go down to the camp and bury the dead.

Suppose these people knew? They’d have to know, wouldn’t they?

He stopped dead in the middle of the road. All those terrorists had to live somewhere, didn’t they? True, Ryan had barely seen the compound within the fence, but not everyone could live inside there, could they? He couldn’t risk it.

But he couldn’t stay here in the middle of the road, either. He had to do something.

He retreated back to the wood line on the right-hand side of the road-the side opposite the lit-up house-and he slowed his approach to a cautious tiptoe. From this distance, in the dark, the house looked exactly like Hollywood’s version of a mansion, complete with tall pillars out front.

This felt wrong to him. He decided it was not the place to seek help.

He stayed off the road until the lights from the house were no longer visible, and then he dared to start running again on the road. He went a long way, and it took him a long time. He didn’t know how far or how long, but from the sting of his legs and the heave of his lungs, he figured it had to be the equivalent of a 5K race. That meant three-point-one miles, or, to the rest of the world, a long way.

How was it possible to run three miles anywhere and not see anything? Even in Fayetteville-which was close to the capital of nowhere-he’d have passed a house or two on a run this long. He supposed it was possible, given the darkness of the night, that he’d passed the very kind of house he was looking for-empty with the lights off-but how could he know?

He craned his neck for a view of the horizon. Still no sign of dawn. He still had time. The plan was still alive.

One day, when all of this was over, Ryan was going to research how it was possible that in West Virginia hills only went up. On the way in on the night they were taken, the entire trip had seemed uphill, and now that he was going the opposite direction on foot, he knew damn well that it was all uphill.

As he crested his current slog, he saw a glimmer of hope. Somewhere in the distance-near or far, he couldn’t tell-a tiny light beckoned him. And unlike the lit-up house earlier, this light was far enough away from the compound to give him hope that the people who owned it weren’t complicit Nazis, but instead innocent Germans. You know, to keep the metaphor alive.

Still, he had to be careful. Everything was at stake here, including heartbeats and breathing. It behooved him to be careful. He slowed to an old-guy jog, and then to a walk.

Whatever the light was, it wasn’t a house this time. It was too small. Like, really small. And as he got closer, he noted that a splash of blue had invaded the white light.

He stopped. “Holy shit,” he said aloud. Was it even possible? Unless he was hallucinating, that blue spot was an image of a telephone.

Ryan didn’t have any coins in his pocket. “Oh, please,” he whispered. “Oh please, oh please, oh please.” He lifted the phone from its cradle.

Dial tone. Yes!

He pressed the receiver to his face and dialed 911. The line clicked with electronic noise, and five seconds later, he heard a voice on the other end.

“Maddox County Sheriff’s Office, Technician Phelps. What is your emergency?”

A flood of emotion erupted from deep within Ryan’s soul. This was his moment to be brave-to announce to the world that he was here to save his family-yet when the moment arrived, he dissolved into deep, choking sobs.