The Hit

Chapter





58





REEL WENT TO THE CORNER of the room, shoved the table aside, knelt down, and lifted up a section of the floor, revealing a three-foot-square opening.

“Where does that go?” asked Robie, who sounded chagrined that he hadn’t noticed it before.

“Away from here.”

She sat on her butt and dropped down into the hole. “Let’s go. They won’t be waiting out there long.”

“Then let me persuade them they should exercise some caution,” said Robie.

He moved to the window and fired five shots through it. He placed his rounds in a wide enough array that anyone approaching would be forced to take cover. Then he moved to the hole and dropped through. He stood up and motioned to Gwen. “Come on.”

Gwen shook her head. “I’ll just slow you down.”

Reel stood next to Robie. “Gwen, you’re not staying behind.”

“I’m old and just worn out, Jess.”

“This is not open for discussion. Come on.”

Gwen slipped a revolver from the front pocket of her dress and pointed it at Reel. “You’re right. This is not open for discussion, Jess. Go.”

Reel looked at her in disbelief.

Robie pulled on her arm. “Not much time.”

They heard footsteps approaching from all sides.

“Go!” snapped Gwen. “I didn’t raise you to die like this. You’re going to go and finish this, Jess. Now.”

Robie slung his bag over his shoulder, pulled Reel down into the hole, and then moved the piece of flooring back into place. Gwen scuttled over and repositioned the table back over the opening. Then she turned to the door to face what was coming.

Robie and Reel had to crawl on their bellies. At one point in the tunnel there was a large knapsack. Reel snagged it, slung it over her shoulder, and kept crawling.

“Where does it come out?” asked Robie.

“In the woods,” she whispered. Her voice was strained.

Robie knew where her mind was. On Gwen. On what was about to happen to her. But maybe they wouldn’t hurt the old woman.

The gunshots they both heard moments later settled that question. Barely inches behind her in the tunnel, Robie ran up the backs of Reel’s legs as she stopped at the sound.

They just lay there for several seconds. Robie could hear Reel breathing fast.

“You okay?” he finally asked.

“Let’s go,” she said in a husky voice, and she started crawling again.

What they heard thirty seconds later made them accelerate their movements. Other people had dropped into the tunnel. Robie and Reel whipped their bodies back and forth, performing a hyper-speed version of the Army crawl.

A minute later Reel stood, pushed against something, and then her legs disappeared from sight. Robie scrambled up after her, gained purchase on the dirt, and looked around.

They were in the middle of the forest.

The cover for the tunnel had been well designed: a fabricated tree stump made of lightweight materials.

Reel unzipped her bag, slipped out a grenade, counted to five, pulled the pin, bent down, and tossed it as far down the tunnel as she could.

Then they both ran for it, Reel in the lead because she knew where to go, Robie right behind. His gun was out and he was alternating between following Reel and covering their rear flank.

The explosion wasn’t loud, but they could both hear it clearly.

“That was for Gwen,” Robie heard Reel say as they raced through a barely discernible path between the trees.

Up a he ad was an old shack. Reel headed right for it. She unlocked the door, darted inside, and a few moments later came out, rolling a dirt bike behind her.

“I wasn’t expecting company. It’ll be a tight fit.”

They could barely sit on the seat together. Reel drove and Robie clung to her. He was now carrying both bags over his shoulders. As they wound through the trees he was nearly thrown off several times, but just managed to maintain his seat.

Twenty minutes later they finally hit asphalt after clearing a cleft in the trees and then a broad ditch that Reel simply jumped. They landed so hard that Robie thought he would leave his privates behind. But he gritted his teeth and clung to the woman. She rotated the throttle to maximum and roared off down the road.

“Where to?” Robie shouted in her ear as the wind whipped them both.

“Not here,” she yelled back.

They drove for what seemed like hours, and finally ditched the bike behind an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of a small town. They walked into the town, which was made up of decrepit buildings and mom-and-pop stores.

The sun was starting to rise. Robie looked over at Reel, now revealed in the coming dawn. She was dirty, disheveled. As was he.

She looked straight ahead, the anger on her face almost painful to see.

“I’m sorry about Gwen,” said Robie.

Reel didn’t answer him.

An Amtrak train station loomed ahead. It was just a tired-looking old brick building on a raised platform with a slender ribbon of track next to it. A few people were sitting on wooden benches waiting for their early morning ride to somewhere.

Reel went inside and paid cash for two tickets. She came back out and handed one to Robie.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Not here,” she said.

“You keep saying that. But it doesn’t really tell me anything.”

“I’m not prepared to have this discussion yet.”

“Then get prepared as soon as this ride is over,” said Robie.

He walked down the platform and leaned against the wall, looking in the direction from which they had come.

How did they follow me? How did they know?

There wasn’t anybody. I could swear there wasn’t anybody who could have known.

In his pocket was his Glock. He gripped it with one hand. He had a strong feeling that things were not safe yet.

He was still holding both the bag from the tunnel and his knapsack. He glanced over at Reel. She was just standing there next to the tracks.

Robie assumed she was thinking about Gwen lying dead back there.

Ten minutes later he heard the train coming. It came to a stop with a long screech of brakes and release of hydraulic pressure. He and Reel boarded the middle car.

This was not the Acela bullet train. The car looked like it had been in service since Amtrak was created in the early seventies.

They were the only passengers on this car. There was a single attendant, a sleepy-looking black man in a uniform that didn’t fit him very well. He yawned, took their tickets, stuck them to the back of their seats, and told them where the café car was located if they were hungry or thirsty.

“The conductor will be along at some point to take your tickets,” he said. “Enjoy the ride.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Robie, while Reel just stared straight ahead.

As the train rolled out of the station the attendant walked up the aisle and disappeared into the next car, probably to make his spiel to the few passengers there.

Robie and Reel settled down in their seats, he at the window, she at the aisle. Robie had put both bags at his feet.

Minutes passed and he said, “So where are we going?”

“I’ve booked us through to Philly, but we can get off at any stop in between.”

“What’s in your bag besides grenades?”

“Things we might need.”

“Who was the old guy in the photo with you?”

“Friend of a friend.”

“Why not the friend?”

She glanced at him in mild reproach. “Too easy. If I’d done that, do you think they would have left the photo for you to see? They’re an intelligence agency, Robie, so you have to assume they have some degree of it to exercise.”

“So the friend?”

“Give me a few minutes. I’m trying to deal with the loss of another friend, maybe my last one.”

Robie was about to push her, but then something told him not to.

The loss of a friend. I can relate to that.

“Did you dig that tunnel?”

She shook her head. “It was already there. Maybe bootleggers. Maybe some criminal owned it and that was his escape hatch. When I bought the place and found it I made Cabin 17 my hideaway for that very reason.”

“Good thing you did.”

She looked away. She obviously didn’t want to talk anymore.

“You want something to eat or drink?” he asked a few minutes later as the train started to slow. They were probably approaching another podunk station where a few more sleepy people would climb aboard.

“Coffee, nothing to eat,” she said curtly, still not looking at him.

“I’ll get some stuff, just in case you change your mind.”

He walked up the aisle and kept going until he reached the café car. There was one person ahead of him, a woman dressed in a jean skirt, boots, and a tattered coat. She gathered up her coffee, pastries, and a bag of chips and headed on her way. She stumbled as the train slid into the station and stopped.

Robie helped right her and then stepped up to the counter. The uniformed man behind it was about sixty with a full gray beard and small narrow eyes behind thick glasses.

“What can I get you, sir?” he asked Robie.

Robie looked at the offerings on the menu board behind the counter. “Two coffees, two muffins, and three packs of peanuts.”

“Just brewing a fresh pot. Coming up.”

“No hurry.” Robie turned and looked out the window. This station looked even smaller than the one at which they had boarded. He couldn’t even see the name of the place, although he assumed it had to be posted somewhere.

The next moment he forgot about that.

At the far side of the station, its bumper hanging out just far enough that he could see it, was a black Range Rover.

Robie looked at the few passengers getting on. One was an old woman carrying her belongings in a pillowcase.

Another was a teenage girl with a battered suitcase.

The last passenger was a black man in his forties. He was dressed in not overly clean bib overalls and falling-apart work boots, and he had a dirty knapsack slung over one shoulder.

Robie did not like to stereotype, but none of the new passengers looked like patrons of the Range Rover brand.

When the man behind the counter turned to him with two fresh cups of coffee, Robie was gone.