“The Bridge of the Heavens. On top of the dam. That scenario has nothing but nasty and suicidal written all over it. Too bad we can’t really let Raynor handle it. I know you have the cure, but even cured, give these kids guns and knives and they’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Raynor’s smart and he did manage to capture me, but I’m only one. He doesn’t know it, but he’s out of his league. They’ll roll over him like a tank.” I planned on being there to see it too. No one deserved it more.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s nice to dream once in a while. Pack and get us tickets to Portland. I’ll go wake up Saul and make sure he has one of his guys meet us with some weapons and a car at the airport. Damn, what about your tranq guns? There’s not much sense in going if we can’t take the cure with us.”
“They’re plastic and disassemble in three minutes. Then I reassemble them into a larger gun that is nothing more than a toy. I also have stickers that say TOY, MADE IN CHINA, and SUPER-DUPER MEGA-MACHINE that go on the side. The tranq cartridges we can drop in a bottle of shampoo. We’ll have to check one bag, but no problem. Don’t tell Saul that, though. Tell him we have to smuggle them the only way God and the TSA have left to us.” I grinned. “Tell him it’ll expand his sexual horizons and he should try not to walk funny through the scanner.”
He snorted. “You are pure evil.”
I shrugged. I had no problem telling the truth when I couldn’t get around it and that meant I didn’t have a right to be offended when I heard it. “Somebody has to be.”
Jokes aside, by the end of it all, that could be more true than Stefan imagined. Someone had to do the only thing left to do. I hoped he could live with that.
I hoped I could too.
The flight was long. I’d commented that if they let me do the flying, it would be much shorter. Stefan accepted the statement with all the forgiveness and love one brother had for another. He popped me one in the shoulder, hard. Considering I’d learned to fly using the Internet and a few DVDs and the crash was minor, in my opinion, I’d think that he’d let it go, but no. I had a feeling I was grounded, quite literally, for a very long time.
When he was handing me his peanuts, crackers, chips, and soda, he said, “You’re planning on Raynor’s being there to help out, aren’t you? Not intentionally, but you think he can provide some sort of distraction.”
My lips curved as I took his food. I used to try to make sure we both had equal shares on the run or at home, but we’d both come to realize that despite his doing it out of big-brother instinct, I actually needed more food than did either he or your average four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler. I’d stopped protesting then. In this particular case, anyone sane would have considered it a favor that someone else had taken the inedible airplane snacks off their hands.
“He does have an Institute tracker, the same as we do,” I said. “And I don’t think Peter likes him any more than he likes me.” I opened the bag of peanuts and sighed as they spilled out stale and rock hard into my hand. Saul had the aisle seat and I leaned over Stefan to say in a low tone, “Is the you-know-what still with you?”
“You son of a bitch. I didn’t buy that for a second. I know more about the S word than you ever will.” He couldn’t say smuggling. There are no secrets on airplanes. Sound travels and passengers these days were more than willing to take off their belts and try to strangle an orange-haired would-be terrorist/smuggler or a man who simply liked to walk around with a tranquilizer cartridge concealed in his rectum for no special reason.
“Sure you do, Saul. And you weren’t disappointed that you didn’t have to bend over and take it like a man.” I’d learned that phrase on TV when I was fresh out of the Institute and Stefan had choked on his dinner when I’d asked him to explain it to me. “I believe you.” I went back to my peanuts and the SkyMall catalog. Godzilla, in his carrier under the seat in front of me, had his pointed muzzle through the crosshatch of metal bars and was vengefully biting the toe of my shoe. Flying didn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite activity today.
“How many plans do you have for how this can go down?” Stefan asked. “It’s not as though there are too many hiding places on a bridge. I’ve been able to come up with one plan on this. Two if Raynor shows up.”
I turned a page. They had the most absolutely needless inventions in this magazine. It was hypnotic. “Two.”
“Not your usual ten or twenty? I think I’m unnerved.”
I glanced over at him. His tone was light, but his face was serious, grimly so. “Only unnerved? I’m scared shitless.” And there was nothing theoretical about that.