"Yeah, yeah, sure, Starkey." Then he looks at Starkey"s hand, like he might ask a question about it, but decides not to. "What"s the signal?"
Starkey looks at the kid"s load of weapons and pulls out a flare gun. "This," he says. "Go now!"
The kid races off to spread the word.
Starkey can see Trace"s Jeep speeding back toward the main aisle from the supply jets, having been given bad information from the idiots guarding him. Starkey"s not sure where Connor is-perhaps the ComBom, which will probably be the next place Trace will check.
Then Starkey spots Ashley racing from the a.r.s.enal with a nasty-looking machine gun, and he intercepts her. Her eyes go wide when she sees him.
"What the h.e.l.l are you doing out? Does Connor know?"
"He will if you don"t keep your voice down!"
Ashley moves closer to him. "Forget it, Starkey. Why don"t you just make a run for it? Connor won"t care, as long as you"re out of his way when the Juvies come."
"Are you a stork, Ashley, or are you one of Connor"s lackeys after all?"
When it"s put that way, there"s really only one response that Starkey"s key "sleeper agent" could give.
"What do you want me to do?"
63 * Trace
Unable to find Connor, Trace speeds back to the main aisle, headed for the ComBom, ready to sound the alarm himself. He sees kids carrying weapons away from the a.r.s.enal, but they"re not moving nearly fast enough.
He"s so distracted, he nearly runs down Ashley, who"s standing right in his path. He screeches to a halt.
"Trace! There you are!"
"Where"s Connor? The Juvies are coming with a full takedown force."
"We know, Hayden heard the chatter," Ashley tells him. "Connor wants you to power up the escape jet."
"He knows I"m back?"
"Of course-he saw you racing off to the supply jets in a panic."
"It wasn"t panic," Trace says, although he knows it was. "I"ll get the Dreamliner ready for flight. If we"re fast enough, we may not need to fight them. Tell Connor to start loading kids onto the plane."
"Sure thing, Trace." But she does no such thing. She watches Trace race to the Dreamliner and climb up the stairs. Then she goes to tell Starkey that her mission has been accomplished.
64 * Lev
The rifle shot explodes through the Graveyard gate, ringing in Lev"s ears. "Down!" he yells. "They"re shooting at us!"
But Miracolina is already down. Not just down, but crumpled. She lies lifelessly in the dirt by the side of the road.
"No!" He falls to his knees beside her, afraid to look, afraid to touch her. "Please, G.o.d! No!" This can"t be happening. Not again! Everyone Lev gets close to is either killed or maimed, and it can"t happen again! He prays for the impossible. He prays for it not to be true. . . .
Then he rolls Miracolina over to find there"s no gaping hole in her chest. But there is a small spot of blood on her shoulder. And the tiny flag of a tranq bullet. He doesn"t know whether to be relieved or horrified.
"Looks like you"ve got trouble from both sides, Lev," says Nelson, somewhere in the dark behind him. "What to do . . . what to do?"
Then, from the gate, he hears a shaky voice say, "Stay away, whoever you are, or I"ll shoot again!"
But before the teen guard can even aim his rifle, Nelson fires a second tranq bullet out of the darkness and takes the guard down right through the fence.
"Enough of him," Nelson says calmly. "Now, where were we?"
Lev still can"t see Nelson, but Nelson can clearly see him, because Lev hears the telltale pffft of a tranq being fired. It hits his pant leg, deflecting off a rivet in his jeans, and lands in the gravel beside him. Lev knows he has no defense against Nelson now, so thinking quickly, he grabs the dart, digs it into the fabric of his jeans, careful not to nick his skin, and collapses on top of Miracolina. He closes his eyes. He hears the second guard panicking by the fence, and hears Nelson"s footsteps approaching from the other direction on the gravel. Lev"s heart races like it might explode in his chest, but he holds still, playing possum for his life, and prays for a second miracle in as many minutes. He prays that Nelson will fall for his act.
65 * Nelson
He never went to Indian Echo Caverns. Nelson merely drove his van to a roadside cafe a few miles away, then monitored his laptop and waited for the tracking nanites in Lev and Miracolina"s blood to show movement away from the cabin. Then he followed. It was no accident that the bed frames were nearly rusted all the way through. Nelson had wanted them to escape. For a while he worried that Lev might be too stupid to figure out how to break free, but in the end the boy rose to the occasion.
Lev didn"t give away the location of Connor La.s.siter that day, but Nelson heard enough to know that they were on their way to warn him about the big bad parts pirate. All Nelson had to do was give them a leash and let them lead the way.
Now that he knows La.s.siter is at the defunct air force base, he has no use for these two anymore, but killing them would require too much disposal time. Besides, knowing Lev will wake up and have to live with the knowledge that he was responsible for Connor being unwound on the black market is a far sweeter revenge than the numb silence of death.
Nelson is not seriously concerned about the skittish AWOL still manning the gate. The first one fired wild, and he"s confident the second doesn"t really know how to wield a rifle with live ammo either. Most likely they were trained on tranq bullets, which have no kick and shoot lower. Nelson, who can use both, is well armed for this mission. In fact, he has a romantic notion that, for this capture, he will be like an old-fashioned gunslinger-his singular purpose reflected in a tour de force of firepower. He has three pistols at the ready and a semiautomatic rifle slung across his back. All but one pistol are loaded with fast-acting tranqs, which are far more effective than bullets. A bullet can graze a target, hit a limb-even inflict a body shot, and still the target can return fire. With a tranq, no matter where it hits, it takes a target out of the equation instantly. As for the live-ammo pistol, well, Nelson considers that his insurance policy.
He"s about to check Lev to make sure he made an accurate and effective hit, when the situation takes a drastic turn that no gunslinger could have predicted.
66 * Gate Guard
The one remaining kid at the gate has no idea what has taken his comrade down. Their job usually consists of giving directions to people who are lost, because no one comes to the Graveyard intentionally at night. Trace has put the fear of G.o.d into both of them, however, and now his friend is lying on the ground right in front of the gate, possibly dead.
He hurries to him, fully expecting to be killed on the way. Although he heard voices outside the gate, they"re silent now. No one shoots at him. And he"s relieved to find his friend still breathing.
The only warning he has is the sudden rev of an approaching engine. Then out of nowhere, a police battering ram, its headlights dark, crashes through with such speed that the gates fly off their hinges. He dives out of the way just in time, and when he looks back, he sees his unconscious friend turned to roadkill by the wheels of the battering ram. Flowing in behind the ram is a flood of Juvey squad cars and armored riot trucks, followed by the chilling sight of Unwind transport trucks-it"s just as Trace said. This is a full takedown force!
Only now that they"ve crashed the gate do their headlights come on, illuminating the desert before them, glinting off the planes in the distance. After the last transport truck pa.s.ses through the gate, a brown van barrels through, following the Juvies, and then some kid races through the ruined gate, running after the van.
What comes next? thinks the gate guard. An elephant?
When the running kid realizes there"s no way he"s going to catch up with the party crashers on foot, he spots the guard and runs toward him. The guard reflexively raises his rifle but realizes that like an idiot, he"s holding it upside down. By the time he rights it, the kid is there, ripping it away from him.
"Don"t be stupid, I"m not the enemy," he says. There"s something familiar about his face. Like maybe he"s seen him before, but with shorter hair. "You have a Jeep or something?"
"Behind the trailer . . ."
"Good. Give me the keys."
And this younger kid"s voice is so commanding, the guard obeys, reaching into his pocket and handing him the keys.
"Listen to me," the kid says. "There"s a girl outside the gate. She"s been tranq"d. I want you to get her and run. Take her someplace safe. Do you understand?"
The guard nods "Yeah, sure. Someplace safe."
"Promise me you"ll do that."
"Yeah, yeah, I promise."
Satisfied, the kid gets into the Jeep and drives off toward the main aisle, where gunfire can already be heard. Clearly he doesn"t know how to drive, but that really doesn"t matter much when there"s no road, only hardpan desert.
Once he"s gone, the guard takes a moment to look at the remains of his fallen comrade, then bolts. Somewhere in the bushes just outside the gate is a tranq"d girl. He doesn"t care. Every man for himself in a Juvey crackdown. Every girl, too. So rather than even looking for her, he takes off running as fast as he can, and leaves the girl to the Juvies, or the coyotes-whichever come first.
67 * Connor
With his volunteer defense force fully armed-about sixty kids in all-Connor dispatches half of them to hide behind Rip, the largest boys" dormitory. It"s a C-130 cargo plane with its wings ripped off and a belly slung so low to the ground that a small militia can hide behind it. "You"re the left defense flank," he tells them. "Do what you can to draw the Juvies" fire and keep them in the north end of the main aisle."
"Maybe we"ll get lucky for once," one kid says. "Maybe the Juvies won"t come after all."
Connor tries to offer him a rea.s.suring smile. He doesn"t know the boy"s name. He tried his best to learn as many names as he could, but there was only so much he could do. If this kid gets killed, or worse, unwound, who will remember him? Who will remember any of them? He wishes he could have been wise enough to have had each kid carve his or her name into the steel of the old Air Force One, as a testament to the fact that they existed. Even if no would ever see it, at least it would be there. But now it"s too late.
Connor takes the rest of his fighting force to the Rec Jet, directly across the main aisle from Rip. "We"ll set up a barricade beneath the wings," he tells them, "and shoot out from behind it."
"Where will you be?" a girl asks.
"Right beside you, Casey," Connor tells her, happy to have remembered her name.
"No," says another kid. "The king should never be on the front lines. In chess, I mean."
"This isn"t chess," Connor points out. "It"s our lives."
"Yeah," he says, "but I kinda like to picture myself as a knight."
"Well, you got the horse face," says Casey, and everyone laughs. That they can laugh in the face of this says more about their courage than anything else.
Connor and his left flank fighters race to push couches, tables, and arcade machines into a barricade. Then, while Connor"s upending a pool table, Hayden"s voice blares in his earpiece.
"Connor, something"s wrong. I can"t raise the guards at the gate-no one"s responding."
"It can"t be! We"re not ready!"
Then the horse-faced kid says, "We"ll never be ready. So I guess that means we"re as ready as we"ll ever be."
Connor climbs to the hatch of the Rec Jet and looks north across the dark desert to see a wall of approaching headlights fanning out . . . getting wider. "Sound the alarm," he tells Hayden. "Here we go."
68 * Vessels
To look at an airplane head on, one might get the uncanny feeling that it has eyes. No doubt the planes of the Graveyard have witnessed many things, and perhaps they are the only ones with a clear perspective of fight and folly on the day the Juvenile Authority invades.
GymBo, the northernmost jet on the main aisle, has the best view of the approaching Juvey force. Its fuselage resonates with the monotone blare of the general alarm. On the ground around it, kids who had been trying to save what they can from the salvage yard drop what they"re doing and run south, as they"ve been told. What was an organized chaos now becomes full-fledged panic around the stalwart rows of retired aircraft.
The medical jet has a clear view of the Dreamliner and its engines, which are powering up, preparing for flight. If Connor could see what the medical jet sees, he might alter his plan and call for everyone to get onboard before the Juvies arrive, but he has no idea that the escape jet is back in play.
The Dreamliner has an un.o.bstructed view of Starkey, who is no longer bothering to hide his face as he prepares to signal the storks to abandon Connor"s plan and follow his. But Trace in the c.o.c.kpit is too involved in prepping the plane to share the jet"s vision.
Toward the south end of the main aisle, Hush Puppy, the stealth bomber, watches as panicking Whollies running beneath its wings and belly stop as they hear the Dreamliner"s engines begin to power up. "What"s this?" they cry. "Are we flying out of here after all?" And rather than running south they hesitate, unsure of what to do.