39 | DARKNESS
Sam led the way, groping along the corridors in the minimal light from the emergency lighting, the only thing in the mall that was still operating.
Tyler followed him, his arms cuffed behind his back and a pistol pressed against his spine by Vienna, who was close behind. He had been stripped of his armor, helmet, and boots, as they contained tracking devices. His belt radio was in the hands of Dodge, at the rear of the small party.
When they reached the main thoroughfare, Sam’s first impression was of chaos, people moving in every direction without reason, without purpose.
He quickly realized that was wrong, though. Those people were heading for the exits, while others congregated in groups, standing or sitting in the middle of the mall, waiting for the lights to come back on. There was a sense of confidence. Confidence in the abilities of those in charge to restore order and stability.
How little they really knew!
He saw a woman trying to use a cell phone, shaking the phone with frustration as if somehow that would help it connect.
Some practical-minded people had flashlights, either purchased or, more likely, “borrowed” from the department stores or hardware stores in the mall.
“One of the Tactical teams is trapped in an elevator,” Dodge said from behind them, one ear to Tyler’s radio. “But the rest are coming down the emergency stairs on the west of the building. The dog team is coming back from the north corner. They’re all looking for Tyler. Wondering why he isn’t responding to the radio.”
“Should we give Tyler the radio, tell him what to say, like we did with Gordon?” Sam asked.
Dodge shook his head. “Tactical have special code words to indicate that they are in trouble. Better to leave them guessing.”
The sliding doors at the southwestern entrance to the mall had been shut when the power had gone off, but someone had forced them open using the legs of a chair as a lever.
The gap was narrow, and they had to join a queue of people trudging through. From the darkness in the center of the mall, Sam could hear barking, and he knew the dog teams were not far away. He hurriedly squeezed through to the outside.
The temperature had dropped from earlier in the day, and with the night had also come a freezing rain. It pierced through his shirt and stung like needles on the bare skin of his face, long watery icicles exploding in pools of water on the street.
Sam wrapped his arms around himself and stood to one side, trying to get some cover from the overhang of the mall roof as the others came through the gap.
They crept down Fairlane Drive, avoiding the police cars, and crossed over the Great Mall Parkway onto McCandless Drive. At the center of the parkway, they had to pass under a train, lifeless, lightless, and stranded in the middle of the elevated light-rail tracks. From inside, frightened eyes peered down at the dark, wet streets that surrounded them.
They continued down the wide, tree-lined avenue, using their fingers to narrow the flashlights down to pencil-thin beams. In the light, the rain made long white scratches on the wall of blackness around them.
Tyler’s radio crackled back into life as they neared the spillway bridge, and in the relative quiet of McCandless Drive, Sam could hear the voices clearly.
“Hutchens, this is Dog One; we have a scent trail outside the main doors, heading down Fairlane. Over.”
“Copy that. All teams converge on Fairlane.”
“Kill the flashlights, quick!” Sam said. “And get off the bridge—get down into the spillway.”
Dodge pushed Tyler roughly sideways, but he kept his feet and followed Sam, climbing over a low mesh fence and down a steep bank covered in tussock grass, toward the spillway canal.
Sam risked a flash of his light here in the dip, out of sight of their pursuers. The water looked murky, with patches of dark green. It spluttered and spat under the impact of the rain. It also looked freezing cold, but fortunately, there was sufficient dry bank on either side for them to clamber along under the bridge without getting wet. They crouched beneath the thick concrete span and waited silently.
The sound of running footsteps came from above them, and the beams of strong flashlights splayed out across the water. At the point where they had left the roadway, the sounds paused but did not stop, the dogs losing the scent in the rain and moving on across the bridge overhead.
Tyler made no sound, mostly due to the fact that the barrel of Vienna’s pistol was firmly wedged in his mouth.
“It won’t take them long to realize they’ve lost the scent,” Vienna said. “We need to move. Get in the water—it’ll kill the trail for the dogs.”
Sam took one more look at the murky, sludgy canal water and obeyed without hesitation. There was a faintly putrid smell to the water, a whiff of decayed vegetation. It filled his shoes and soaked his jeans, sending shock waves of cold through his body.
“Go west,” Vienna whispered, pointing in the darkness. “The canal splits and they won’t know which way we’ve gone.”
At the spillway intersection, they turned north, heading back toward the Great Mall but well below the level of the road.
“Move it!” Dodge said, prodding Tyler in the back. They all picked up the pace, trying to get as much distance between their pursuers and themselves as possible.
“Wait here,” Vienna said a few minutes later, clambering up the bank through the tussock grass.
Lights turned the corner of the canal, and they could hear the voices of the searchers, no more than thirty or forty yards away.
“Where is she?” Sam whispered urgently.
“She’ll be here,” Dodge replied. The sound of a large engine came from the top of the bank, and Vienna’s voice hissed, “Up here, quick.”
“There!” A shout came from behind them.
Tyler tried to delay them as they climbed the steep bank, but Dodge grabbed his wrists and lifted, twisting Tyler’s arms up so that he gave a small cry of pain and had to keep stumbling forward to take off the pressure.
“Freeze!” voices called from behind them, but Sam ignored them, hauling on the long damp strands of tussock to help himself to the top of the bank.
A small van, a black Volkswagen Transporter, was pulled up to the fence, its engine idling, its lights off. The side door was open, and Dodge jerked Tyler roughly over the fence and threw him through the opening, where he landed facedown on the carpet.
“Freeze! Armed federal agents. Do not move or we will fire upon you!”
“Get in,” Dodge yelled. “They won’t shoot, not while we have Tyler.”
Sam threw himself in the open door on top of Tyler and felt Dodge climb in beside him. Dark figures appeared at the fence behind them, and he rolled over and grabbed the handle of the door, slamming it shut.
No sooner had he done that than it opened again, and a black-suited figure was reaching into the van.
Sam kicked the man as hard as he could in the chest, and the man staggered backward as the tires spun in the wet, then gripped the road. The van took off at high speed, the soldier falling away into the darkness behind them.
They saw the helicopter before it saw them, the huge “night sun” floodlight washing away the darkness from the roadway in front of them and filling the air below it with a heavy curtain of rain. Vienna spun the van off the road as the massive circle of light approached and hid beneath the canopy of a group of trees in front of a used-car lot.
The helicopter passed by without seeing them. “Time to change cars,” Vienna said, the van crawling down the long rows of the car lot.
She stopped alongside a black Ford crew-cab pickup with raised suspension and outsized, off-road wheels. It towered over the other cars in the dark of the lot.
“This’ll do,” she said.