Crux

88 SAFE AND SOUND

Saturday November 3rd

Rangan Shankari woke slowly. Everything hurt. His head was spinning.

“Steady there, son,” a voice said. A man’s voice, gruff. “You’re safe now. You did it.”

Rangan blinked, tried to take in his surroundings. Dark. A damp smell. A cellar.

He was on a cot, under a blanket. His clothes were missing. He could feel a bandage around his abdomen. He was groggy and half numb.

Seated next to him, in an old-fashioned rocking chair, was an older man in boots and jeans and a checked shirt. His hair was damp, like he’d been out in the rain. An ancient-looking shotgun rested across the man’s knees.

“Where?” Rangan tried to speak. It came out weakly. His head ached. His mouth felt filled with cotton balls.

“You’re at my farm,” the man said. “My wife’s gettin’ ya some soup. I’m Earl Miller, friend of Father Levi’s.”

Rangan cleared his throat, tried to clear his head.

“Thank you, Mr Miller. The risk you’re taking…”

Earl waved that away.

“You took a risk, son,” he said. “Me? Those bastards took my grandson. This ain’t no risk at all.”

“So what now?” Rangan asked.

Earl Miller chuckled. “Now, you rest up. You got a bullet in your side, at least one broken rib, some burns you’re gonna feel when the pills wear off. We’ll hide ya here long as we need to, heal ya up. Then we’ll get ya out. And after that we’re gonna give these baby-stealin’ sons-a-bitches hell.”

Feng let the acceleration push him back into the co-pilot’s seat as the executive jet’s front wheels lifted off Shiva’s private airstrip. His left arm dangled uselessly in an improvised sling, sending up a deep aching pain. He was more qualified to fly this plane than Sam, but she had the advantage of two functional arms. He consigned himself to navigation, and to understanding and activating the defensive systems Shiva had installed in this jet.

Behind them, in the passenger compartment, Feng could feel the children. Twenty-five of them, their minds linked by Nexus, frightened, confused, crammed into a Falcon 9X meant to transport a dozen adults. They were buckled in two to a seat where possible. More crouched on the floor in the aisles, clutching flotation jackets and blankets for some rudimentary shock protection.

If anything went wrong…

Feng could feel Kade back there as well, in pain, bleeding internally from the punishment he’d suffered, his skin freshly burnt from Nakamura’s attempt to kill him, Shiva Prasad’s blood still crusting his face. Kade was back there coughing up blood, in pain, angry at Sam’s assassination of Prasad, in shock and horror from the bombing in Houston, from what it promised for the future. Yet he was suppressing that pain, suppressing his own raw emotions, exuding calm and peace, trying to keep the children’s terror under control.

He was acting like a soldier.

The codes Kade had taken from Shiva’s mind had unlocked this plane, had allowed them to steal it. They’d found it fueled, provisioned, clearly ready for a fast getaway. Kade had pleaded that they take Shiva’s scientists with them as well, rather than leave them to whatever treatment the Burmese might have in mind. But Sam’s face had gone murderous at that suggestion. And in the end, there was simply no room. They’d left them all there – all of Shiva’s staff, scientists and servants and security alike, waking up from the forced unconsciousness Kade had imposed on them – to fend for themselves.

The back wheels of the Falcon came up and they were airborne. Feng looked over at Sam. Her face was cold, hard, harder than he’d ever seen it. She looked older than just a day ago, lines of anger and loss etched into her visage. The Nexus was gone from her brain. Where previously he’d felt her mind there, could touch it if she’d let him, now there was nothing. She gripped the controls like a drowning woman, clinging tightly to her last chance of rescue.

“Course laid in,” Feng told her. “Flight time to Indian Andaman Islands… eighty-eight minutes.”

Sam nodded silently and flew them up and into the night sky, as Feng sat back and fretted about his friends.