Shwa. So onto a sort of different chapter after that loaded doozy.
Disclaimer: Love does not translate into ownership, sadly enough.
Chapter 25
I am the king of obvious observations: the first thing that crosses my mind when we step outside the Phoenix airport is, "Wow. It's hot." I'm sure Einstein would have taken fifteen minutes to reach that conclusion—at least.
Who am I kidding? I just needed a little sarcastic quip to lighten the mood; with Riley being tight-lipped, I was going through Rileyism withdrawal and the only way to get rid of it was to think of one myself. Though if I had said it aloud I probably could have counted on a punch in the arm. Shame…the bruises from my Stan-bashing have just healed.
"The rent-a-car's over here," Sadusky says upon exiting. We follow him past the crowds of people with duffels and rolling suitcases galore to the side where a dusty Jeep Cherokee awaits. I think the car may have been a forest green at one point, but now it's a perfect tone of sand. "This was the only four-wheel drive they had," he says. "It just got back from an off-roading trip, but it'll get us from point A to point B."
Riley approaches the back door and pries it open as the caked dust sprinkles to the pavement. "Charming," he mutters. "We stopping by a car wash, then?"
"Nope," the agent says cheerfully. "The dirt's great camouflage in the desert, where there's not much space to hide. And believe me, we don't want to be found."
Abigail and I exchange blank glances before turning back to him. "How come?" she asks slowly.
"Area 51's a top-secret place—you've got to realize that. We're at risk even going near it."
"We really don't have much of a choice," I sigh quietly, casting a glance at Riley, who is memorizing the cracks in the parking lot under the front tire. Suddenly the urge to grab him by the shoulders and just hold him like I wish his mother could have done and keep Ingram and the world at bay, even just for a second. But I have to subdue the inclination—I'd just get shoved away.
"Nothing's going to be resolved standing here," Sadusky says with a sympathetic look at me.
"Right," Abigail agrees, squeezing my shoulder and wearing one of those grim smiles.
"I'll drive," I offer.
"You know where to go?" the agent says, grinning. My silence is a sufficient answer, it seems. "Didn't think so." He climbs into the driver's seat as Riley and Abigail do the same in the back.
I feel a million miles away.
"You coming?"
It wasn't Sadusky, nor was it Abigail—through the open door, I see Riley's head leaning against the tinted window, a faint reflection meeting my eyes. His own briefly flick toward me.
"Yeah."
The corner of his mouth twitches, yanking me back from a million miles to only a few.
XXX
Ridiculously obvious observation number two: deserts are dull.
Amid the lifeless car trip banter, my brain takes inventory of the surroundings.
"Hey…" Abigail says, leaning up a bit. "Peter, how much longer do you think we have?"
Cactus. Cactus. Rock. Tumbleweed.
"Hard to say," he sighs.
Lizard. Cactus. Snake. Rock. Dead mouse.
"Yeah," Riley mutters into the window. "Everything looks the same. No landmarks."
Cactus. Sand sand sand sand sand. Vulture.
"Not necessarily, Riley," Sadusky laughs. What's so funny? Sand and cacti are not funny—note my lack of giggling. And then off the road we go.
"Hey, I think we're supposed to stay on that big gray thing with the yellow lines down the middle," Riley says calmly yet more alertly than he's been for the past few hours.
"Area 51 doesn't have its own exit."
"But can't someone see us?" Abigail says, casting a glance behind us, and Sadusky quickly has to cover his snort with a coughing fit. Also take not how "other cars" was conspicuously absent from my comprehensive desert list.
Dust and sand billow up into a foggy cloud behind us as the tires bump and jostle over various small cacti, rocks, tumbleweed and such. "You sure you know where you're going?" Riley says amongst the jolts.
"There's nothing else you have to go by."
By the looks of it, we're probably still in for another hour at the least. Back to the inventory.
Dust cloud. Cactus. Dust cloud. Rock. Dead shrub.
XXX
The engine cut and our jarred bodies tingling with this new sensation of ceased motion, Sadusky inches out of the car and edges along the face of the giant red sandstone boulder in whose shadow we've been cached.
That familiar thudding of nervous adrenaline circulates through my veins, the adrenaline of heists and illegal activities that gives a clear reminder of just how insane we are. Stealing the Declaration, kidnapping the president, breaking Riley out of prison, plainly walking into the FBI—all those seem at least relatively less daunting than sneaking into one of the most secretive government headquarters, one that's been close to the hearts of conspiracy theorists for ages. Then again, I've had this similar line of thinking prior to doing all these other schemes the past few months.
It's time to accept we do crazy things and move on.
"Hey…" Sadusky's back and whispering like the whole world can overhear him. "We're parked along the back…there's an entrance in the rear but we have to hotwire it, and there definitely will be cameras inside so—"
"I'll do it," Riley interrupts. "Or else we're not getting in." As much as we are reluctant to force the task on him, it's true. "Where to, then?"
After throwing a great deal of our weight into the dirt-cemented car doors just to open them, we move slowly behind the agent, the blistering dry heat making our mouths and skin want to crack for lack of moisture.
"Why would anyone want to work out here?" Abigail mutters.
"SHH!" Sadusky waves behind him, eyes glued around the corner. "All right, move."
Between our safe spot and said building—plain concrete and windowless—has to be at least a quarter-mile of a super-exposed mad dash to the door, the one lone stripe of glinting metal.
"C'mon, we don't have all day!"
Outside of our protective shadow the sun is even more tortuous—sunburns already are beginning to form if the scalding on my cheeks is any indication. Suddenly I appreciate leafy trees a whole lot more.
Faces glistening, we approach the door. "Can you get in?" Abigail says as Riley surveys the ten-button punchpad.
"Yeah, hold on…" His fingernails search along the contours of the box and find a groove; in seconds he has the cover discarded on the ground and his hands go to fiddling with the array of wires inside. If that were me, I'm pretty sure I would have electrocuted myself by now.
"…can't believe some of the stuff they're doing, can you?"
We freeze, my blood running cold. That voice was from inside…and it sounded like it was coming closer.
We're dead, caught, done—our hand's literally in the cookie jar. And there's no place to hide.
Maybe they'll make it quick; there's no need to draw out any unnecessary suffering, right?
No one else has moved in our panic, except Riley, whose hands above the mass of wires are twitching in indecision as his eyes flicker around and sweat plops from the tip of his nose. After about five seconds he slams his hand into the fray, his fist returning with a fat red coil.
"Nighty-night," he murmurs and then gives it a rough tug, smiling broadly.
"…where'd the power go, Dave?"
"Dunno…let's go check upstairs."
Riley, meanwhile, is looking smugly pleased with himself. "They need to work on their wiring." As he tries to secure the pad's casing (only to leave it askew like ours before Cibola), he continues, "And the best part is that all the cameras and lights are off, too."
"Shouldn't they have a generator, though?" I ask.
"I'm guessing that what Riley cut was their generator," Sadusky says. "We should go ahead and get in before they figured out what happened."
Halfway expecting the door to betray us with a deafening squeak, we slide through, grateful to whoever had greased the hinges earlier. The voices and steps of Dave and his companion are further off but we still duck into a shadowy enclave.
"What are we looking for?" Abigail mouths, only to get a grimacing shrug in return from Sadusky.
Well that's just wonderful. We might as well be a flock of chickens or—to humor him—ducks with our heads cut off, completely blind. And Lord knows we can't possibly check every room; our luck doesn't go that far.
"Let me just see…" Riley breathes, poking his head around the corner.
Then the voices return, and I pull him back into the safe folds of darkness. Before reverting back to his former policy of ignoring me, he has to shoot me a tiny glare—for what I don't know.
"…eh, they said they'd figure it out, but it better be fast, Dave. I only get one coffee break."
"What were you saying before though? About Nathaniel Ingram?" Almost like a dog's, our ears perk up.
"Well, Frank, from what I've heard, he's trying to use these super-weapons in sector E to take over the banana industry in French Guiana."
"Wha—why?"
"It's been said that taking control of that industry in some South American countries is equitable to overthrowing the government, the nations are so dependent on it."
"I've heard about banana politics, Dave. Why French Guiana?"
A pause follows. "My source—who you know is pretty reliable—says Ingram wants to take over the colony to start a war with France, apparently to finally get back those unpaid war loans from World War I. The man's mindset is that those sums will help offset some of our country's exorbitant debt, stop the spiraling economy and boost the value of the dollar."
"That's ridiculous."
"Tell me about it. With France in the European Union, that's just asking for World War III."
"Can't the UN intervene?"
"From how secretive the operation is, I don't know if they can react in time once things start unfolding."
"Which won't be for a while!" Frank laughs.
"I know! Has Ingram forgotten those weapons aren't functioning yet?"
My inside pocket of my jacket suddenly bulges more obviously—or at least it seems that way, that the accursed orb is growing, feeding off the trouble it's caused. A buzz in my intuition tells me everyone else's eyes are focused on the same thing.
Approaching in the distance is another set of footsteps clapping along the tile floor.
"Hey," Frank's voice greets. "You from maintenance?"
"Mhm," the newcomer says. "The technicians said the circuit break was by the back entrance pad."
"That's odd."
"Yeah, really," Dave chuckles. "We don't use it enough for anything to go wrong."
"I'll say."
"Still," the maintenance man sighs. "Someone's got to check it." The only indication that the door is opened is the rolling wave of heat that stings our faces and the sunlight that creeps into our dark cover. Thankfully we can retreat enough to keep from exposing ourselves. "Uh-oh. Looks like we've got a bigger problem here, fellas."
Dave and Frank's curious murmurings fade as they step outdoors, giving us the chance to at least mumble.
"We need to go in and see these 'super-weapons' for ourselves," Sadusky mouths.
"That's suicide," Abigail breathes. "We have the information and that's all we need."
"I'm with her," Riley mutters under his breath with a point of his thumb.
Before I have a chance to answer, the voices return, quite perturbed.
"…that's fishy."
"That's an understatement."
"They can't have gone far—look over here!"
Oh no.
"I vote Abigail's plan," I mouth quickly.
Taking advantage of the element of surprise, we launch ourselves from our hiding spot and into our potential discoverers. Who I presume are Dave and Frank are quickly incapacitated by some hurried team maneuver by Abigail and Sadusky; as we stand momentarily in shock of the crumpled bodies below us, the maintenance man is able to lumber off down the hall—to sound the alert.
"Run," Riley squeaks.
And back to baking in the scalding sun while we all secretly wait for the scalding searing pain of a bullet to lodge in our back as we run the seemingly longer span to the car.
"Ben!" Abigail pants after a peek behind us. "They're coming! And they're armed!"
"They won't kill us," Sadusky says matter-of-factly. "They'll do that after they capture and question us on how we broke in, which I don't think we were planning on anyway."
Despite our burning limbs and burning skin and burning fear, our legs keep pumping and the base rock keeps approaching. None of us risk a glance over the shoulder to see the security advancing quickly behind us.
Momentum from our sprinting threatens to slam us into the savior that is our Jeep; hands slippery with sweat, we take hours to pry the doors open and dive in, and then only milliseconds for Sadusky to turn the engine and throw it into Reverse. In moments we're nothing but a dust cloud.
"B-but…" Riley gasps, half-collapsed over the back seat. "What a-about…the license plate?"
Abruptly switching to Drive, Sadusky says simply with the overtone of a smirk, "Desert took care of that."
Thank God for caked mud and grime.
XXX
Woo! Notes for this chapter: banana politics is true, I swear. My friend's dad heard about it on a talk radio show or something back in February. And French Guiana is a tiny little colony in north-east South America, north of Brazil and east of Suriname. Just so you know.
And I don't own the Jeep company; I was just riding in one when I was writing that part, so…yeah.
Please review! (smiles hopefully)