Winter of Discontent

We got out the snowmobiles, and Caden began to get the hang of it after the first 15 minutes. Snowmobiles are very fast, capable of automobile speeds in the open. At least, mine are. As she became more familiar with the balance, our speed was upward of 50mph. In an hour and a half we were in Hammerfest and we parked our machines at the house of the native who would be looking after the dogs.

We walked downtown and she got the rudimentary clothes she needed. "I'm going to be glad to have a bra," she said. "Another six weeks and my boobs would be down around my knees."

I squeezed one. "Feels so amazingly firm to me that I think you don't need to worry about that," I told her.

"I wasn't really worried about that," she said. "Jesus, lighten up. Mack.'

It was a long flight to Oslo. It was late afternoon when we got in, and we caught a cab to the waterfront. There was an old cannery there that looked like it was rusting away. Those were carefully cultivated looks. It was actually in very good shape, structurally. The interior was dry and clean. There was a very good fence around it, and I had mined it years ago when I first acquired it. Walking around the grounds inside was dangerous to the uninvited. The gate was electric and swung on high-grade steel. When it was closed, it was reinforced by two four inch steel bars that closed and interlocked. You couldn't just drive through it.

The fence, itself, was steel, ten feet high with razor wire on top, and I could electrify it. There were two inch steel rods between the fence posts with caltrops built into the bottom of the fence. I punched in the code and the gate swung open.

It closed in 30 seconds, and I punched in another code on a garage door. We walked in and I turned on the generators. The buildings weren't hooked up to utilities, but I had two huge Cummins diesel generators. The lights came on and I led her through the factory. It was all metal on the exterior, and it looked rusty, but the metal was sound. A contracting crew worked on it all the time, replacing the metal that was rusted through with carefully superficially rusted replacements. The complex was nearly half a mile long and it butted up against the fjord on the far end. There was a dock inside and I had a 41-foot retired US Coast Guard UTB tied up there. There were a dozen gates through steel wire partitions that required codes before we reached the area where I had made living arrangements. I fired up the heaters and we soon had the area livable. I showed Caden around and she was impressed. There was a nice kitchen, a bedroom, a library, a communications center and an armory there.

I replaced her 9mm with a 45ACP in the same model and got myself another. We didn't need long arms yet, and we left them alone. We needed to go shopping and I took her to get the Volvo truck we had passed on the way in. We bought groceries and five prepaid cell phones. I would use them and then throw them away.

Caden made the first call, and events began to unfold. Her superiors had no idea she was alive or what had happened to their team. They had no location on the chopper crash and Caden couldn't tell them where it had gone down. She told them she had made contact with me and that I was ready to talk. They needed 48 hours to set it up, and we agreed to meet at the ferry terminal. She told them we would call and what time to expect it.

We had driven 20 miles away from the factory and she threw the phone in the trash. We drove four blocks down the street and settled in to wait. It took them four hours to get someone there. Two men eventually showed up. They canvassed the area and finally located the phone in the trash. I asked Caden if she knew either of them, but they were new to her. I suspected that they were local assets, and when we followed them it turned out that they were police. We waited again, and when they got off shift we followed one of them home. I had a cable TV uniform and I carried a clipboard up to his apartment. When he answered the door I hit him with the taser. He went down and I picked him up and carried him out to the truck. We strapped him down and drove three miles away.

He recovered and we questioned him. Caden had on a ski mask and she handled the questions using a voice modulator. She was bundled up until you couldn't tell her sex and she was wearing dark glasses. I didn't care if he recognized me.

"Who contacted you and what were your orders?" she asked him. She was very sinister and he was plainly terrified. He appeared to be even more afraid of her than he was of me.

He gave us the name of his contact and told us that he had been ordered to find us but not to make contact. They had traced the call location and he and his partner had gone there to get eyes on us. When they found the phone, they realized that it was a burner and that we weren't in the area. They had no orders to harm us and they were not to make contact, merely observe.

I duct taped his hands behind his back and put a strip over his eyes. Then we pushed him out. I drove back to the factory complex and we unloaded our groceries.

We nuked pizza and settled in to wait.

"I think it's a good sign that they didn't send snipers or a team to capture you," she said. "The lunatics aren't running the asylum anymore,"

"It's an encouraging start," I conceded. "I don't see any long term change, though."

She counseled patience and I had plenty of that. When I got to spend time talking to Caden, I had all the patience in the world. The time passed quickly, and we drove 10 miles in the other direction. She made the call and we set up a meet time at the ferry terminal.

I put together a plan and we went over it. She was to wait in the truck. I was going to hack into the terminal network and she would be able to watch over their security system. I was going in dressed to change my appearance three times. I wore a hat and sunglasses, a reversible jacket and a sweater over my shirt.

I parked outside and started hacking their WiFi.

"How are you doing that?" she asked. "How do you know their passwords?"

"I don't," I told her. "I just type the letters that are right. I can tell which ones they are."

"Damn," she said. "I wish I could do that."

"I'll lay hands on you later and impart the gift," I told her.

She laughed. "I can't believe you still have the ability to joke around at this stage. Be careful in there, Mack. I don't want to lose you." She clung to me and kissed me for a long time.

"Nothing is going to happen to me in there," I assured her. "I'll be out in 33 minutes."

"Are you sure? Is this something you know or you just trying to make me feel better?"

"No, I can tell."

We had a two-way radio hookup and we checked it. I put in our earpieces and we were good to go.

I got out and walked in. There were hundreds of people milling around and I hung back along the wall until she told me she had me spotted. I had to assume that they were watching the same feed but I kept my face down so they couldn't use facial recognition software on me. She spotted our contact and told me where she was. It was a woman she knew. She thought highly of her and I checked the area out.

"There are three more with her," I told Caden. "The man reading the hot-rod magazine on the bench, the blonde on the second phone from the right and the guy in the trench coat at the store. I'm going to approach her."

I walked the long way around the room and stood behind a column, out of sight of the camera.

"Mack, I can't see you," Caden said in my ear.

"I know, neither can they. I'm going to call her."

"Where are you?" the woman asked when she answered the phone.

"I'm behind you. Don't turn around. What's your name?"

"Malinda Crane; don't play games with me, Slate. You set this up."

"Yes, you came looking for me. What do you want?"

"We want information. The situation got out of hand in Jaffa. The cowboys were running the show. We regret what happened to you there. If you'll stay in contact with us, we just want to run intel by you. If our relationship is working out and you feel like you can trust us we'd like to run tests on you. Anything you don't feel good about, we pull the plug."

"What about your three buddies? They want to play nice, too?"

"Two of them do. The blonde one thinks you're dangerous and weird. She won't do anything about it. She's not very decisive."

"Will you walk out of here with me by yourself? You won't let them tail you?"

"Yes, I'll tell them you've agreed to talk to me, but you don't want any company."

"You're lying, Miss Crane. Not about your three buddies, but they have some way of tracing you."

"I was hoping you wouldn't catch that," she chuckled. "I have a chip in my neck. They'll know where I am, but they won't come within five miles of me. Those are the orders. If you kill me, they'll know and come for you. I don't exactly trust you, either."

"How many people do you have here?"

"Those three, plus twelve more."

"Good, you didn't lie. Tell them you're leaving and walk out the exit marked K. Walk down Kelly Street to Pine. Turn north and I'll meet you."

She stood up and held her hand to her ear. I saw her talking and she pulled out the earpiece. Her agents looked the crowd over, but I had turned my back and was walking out exit D. I stopped beside a kiosk and left the glasses. I turned my jacket inside out and watched her. No one was following her. I guess they were depending on the chip.

My street paralleled hers and when she turned on Pine we met in the middle of the block. There were several people on the sidewalk and she didn't recognize me. I walked up behind her.

"Malinda, I have a .45 aimed at your back," I said. "Just stand here and wait." I called Caden in and the truck pulled up.

I made her get in the back, and when we were in, I pinned her to the side of the truck. I searched her and took a 9mm out from under her coat and a .32 out of an ankle holster.

"If you wanted to feel me up, you could have just asked," she said.

"If you didn't want to be felt up, you could have given me the weapons," I replied. "Okay, sit down and relax."

Caden drove through the streets and pulled up at the complex. She opened the gate and the door and drove in. When she opened the door, Malinda and I got out. Caden hugged her.

"I'm glad you're alive," Malinda said. "When your chopper didn't show we thought you must have found Slate and he took you all out."

"He didn't have anything to do with the helicopter going down," Caden told her. "Benson heard that he had been seen in Hammerfest. He pulled a gun on us and said Macalastair was too dangerous to be allowed to live. Davis jumped him and he shot the pilot by accident. We crashed and I was the only one who survived. Macalastair found me. I had a concussion and a broken leg. You can see the cast. I was freezing to death and he saved my life. He's been nursing me all this time and he agreed to meet with us because I asked him. He saved my life, Malinda. I believe he's telling the truth about what happened in Jaffa and in Macon. The team was torturing him. He killed them to get away."

"It doesn't matter," Malinda said. "That isn't going to happen again. We have three high priority assets and we want to run them by him. What happened before will go away if he helps us. These are terrorists whom we believe are part of two groups planning to kidnap and execute American citizens."

"That's all you want?" I asked.

"No, we want you to be available to do that any time we need you."

"Where would this happen?" I asked.

"It could be here if that's what you want," she said. "There's more. We know what you have is a recessive gene combination. We would like to do some medical tests on you to see if it can be replicated and what the conditions might be. It would be helpful if we had other test subjects. As we move along and you find out we can be trusted, would you be willing to reveal other names?"

"There's no way in hell that's going to happen," I said.

"Please, Mack," Caden pleaded. "Don't be like that. I know you won't sell out your friends. Would you be willing to ask them if they would voluntarily participate?"

I couldn't resist her. "I'll ask them, but I won't tell you any names without the permission of the people involved, and I want to monitor them. I want to make sure they aren't being spirited off somewhere to be tortured."

"We couldn't ask for any more," Malinda said.

"Okay, what's next?" I asked. "What will you do, both of you girls, if you find out this is an elaborate scheme to get hold of me, force me to reveal the names and round us all up?"

"I'll fight for you," Caden said. "Malinda, what about you? What if they've taken us younger agents and fed us a line and that's what they're really planning?"

"I won't work for people like that. I'll defend you with my own life, Macalastair."

"You're going to survive," I told her. "Do you want to be with Caden and me, or do you want it to look like I shot you and left you alive?"

"What the hell are you talking about," she said. Her voice had an edge of fear in it. "If you got me here to kill me, they'll never stop hunting you."

"They aren't patient people," I said. "I would have gone along just to ease Caden's mind. You would have got the intel you wanted on the terror suspects and I would have let you do the tests. Are there really terrorists, or do you think that was a ruse, too?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "There was no ruse."

"Yes, there was," I said. "I know you're telling the truth. It's like I told Caden, they're playing you. You need to answer my question, Malinda."

"I want to be with you," she said. "What's going on?"

"Look," I pointed at the monitors. There were 12 of them. They were dressed in urban camouflage and they had assault weapons. They were getting out of an RV parked across the street from the gate. I could see demolition charges in the hands of two of them. They ran across the street and placed them against the gatepost.

"Malinda, let's see how committed you are," I said. "Flip the big yellow switch there. We need them all down so they can't follow us or track us."

She pulled the relay and the lights dimmed as the fence took the charge. "Arm yourselves with whatever you like," I told them. "Grab your stuff and put it in the boat."

"What are you going to do?" Caden asked.

"I'm going to blow them up," I said. "It's likely that they won't come in without being drawn in. We can't afford much of a fire fight."

I took an M16 and a Remington combat shotgun. "Stay here until I get back," I told them.

"No, don't leave," Caden clutched at me. "Don't leave me here, Macalastair. You're not doing this."

"You can't run, baby," I told her. "I'm going to need to run."

She clung to me and Malinda looked at her, comprehension beginning to dawn in her eyes. "So that's the way it is," she said. "I didn't know, Caden. I'll go with him."

I knew she was going to say that. This was where we were both going to get hurt.

"Caden, go get in the boat and get it started. Don't raise the doors. We'll ram them off with the boat. We'll need hot water and bandages. Painkillers and blood are in the refrigerator over there. Bring it all." I kissed her and Malinda and I jogged off.

We were halfway to the garage when I heard the thump of the explosives. I knew they wouldn't take the gate down with what they had. They would try to use the RV and two of them were going to be electrocuted. We left the gates open and hurried toward the garage. There was a crash and the lights went out. They came back up as breakers tripped and I knew they were probably in.

There were screams outside and two explosions as someone hit the caltrops and two mines exploded. A ram thumped the door three times and it began to sag. I put six rounds through it and someone screamed again. The door was badly bent and the next thump brought it down. I was shooting and I heard Malinda firing bursts. They came swarming through and we got three before they located our position and returned fire. We fell back and Malinda took a bullet low through her belly, just above her hipbone.

I snatched her up and slammed a gate behind us. As I trotted down the walkway I got hit in the back, just under my left shoulder blade and to the outside. It felt like I had been kicked by a mule and it staggered me. I made it through another gate and there was a firing position there. I put Malinda down and we took five more of them at the first gate. Two more went down at the second and they were going to overrun us. Malinda could run, after a fashion, and we limped along, leaking blood as we ran. Four more gates closed behind us and we were in the living area.

I led her down a flight of stairs and we heard the diesels of the boat idling ahead. I pulled the switch and the one minute timer started. Malinda had climbed aboard and I struggled up the ladder myself.

"Go," I shouted at Caden. "Smash through the doors and take us far away from here. Find an island between us and here and put some distance into it before you stop.

"You're bleeding," she froze. "Oh God, you're both bleeding."

"Go or we're going to die here," I shouted.

She thrust the throttles forward and the big boat surged ahead. We crashed through the doors and made fifty yards before the explosions started. It started near the gate and progressed down the building. Fire rolled 50 feet in the air and the building blew apart. We were two hundred yards away when the blast wave hit us. The boat reeled from the shock and the whole complex was a roaring inferno.

Caden kept driving and I looked at Malinda's wound. It was serious, but she was going to live. I didn't feel like I would. By the time I had treated her, my head was swimming. My whole right side was stiff and bloody and it was running down my back. The floor came up and hit me as I heard Caden scream. I couldn't remember lying down, but the deck felt wonderful. I would just close my eyes for a minute.

*****

When I came to, we weren't running. The boat generators were running and it was warm, but the engines had been shut down. I was lying on something soft. There was a pillow under my head and a blanket over me. I looked up and there was a deck chair sitting beside me. Caden was sitting in it. She heard me stir and she knelt beside me. I tried to reach up and pet her. She was crying and she looked like she had been crying for a while.

"My shoulder hurts like hell and my right arm doesn't work," I told her.

"You were shot," she said. "I got the bullet out. It was under the skin on your pectoral. You've lost a lot of blood. I didn't know what type to give you."

"It's all O negative," I told her. "We can all take that."

She jumped up and got a bag and tube out of the refrigerator. She started an IV in my arm and gave me two pills to swallow. One was an antibiotic capsule and one was a pain pill. She opened a bottle of water and I swallowed them down. In fifteen minutes I was feeling better.

Do you think you can get up and get in a bunk?" she asked.

"Yes, I think so. Where's Malinda?"

"She's in bed. We need to get her some blood, too. She didn't lose as much as you. We tried to get you in bed but you weigh a ton, Mack. We might lift your weight, but we couldn't find any handles."

I laughed and it hurt. She helped me up and I leaned on her while my head spun and the deck tilted around me. I felt better, and she took me to the bunks. There were five, and Malinda was in one of the others. She was asleep and we didn't wake her.

Caden made sure I was comfortable and went to get the bedding they had put on the deck for me. She put it back on the bunk and went to get a bag of blood and an IV line for Malinda. She woke her up and got the blood drip started. She pulled a chair over between us and sat down.