Uncaged (43 page)

They’d decided that stealing a gas truck and kidnapping the driver and torching a building could lead to too many ramifications—like hurting innocent hostages, Odin included. West had suspected that would be the case, which was why he’d stopped at the Home Depots for the gloves, chains, and locks. Still, Twist had sort of liked the gasoline idea—more for the theatrical value than because he thought it might work.

“Can you see that? Hundred-foot flames, the fire department crashing into the prison section, the media coverage …”

Shay: “The people roasted to death, our trials …”

So it was option one: rushing the door at the end of the ramp, if it ever opened. They were moving in at two o’clock in the morning because that was when, according to West, human alertness was getting near its low ebb.

They would leave at five if no deliveries showed up.

Cade, much to his disgust, was sitting in the same burnt-out building where West had done surveillance on the Singular building. If the raid came off, he’d drive Cruz’s pickup down to the building because they could get eight people—perhaps nine—and a dog into the pickup and its bed.

Cade had protested, and Twist had shut him up like this: West
had to go, as the one who knew the most about this sort of action; Twist, because he was the boss and an ace in a fight; Cruz, because he knew how to use the gun if he had to; Shay, because she refused to stay behind, and besides, she could handle X, who’d proven to be valuable in a fast-moving fight.

“You’re right,” Cade had conceded. “I’m your driver.”

Twist had extended a fist bump. “Damned
skilled
driver.”

There were few lights around the building—barely enough to see each other at two feet—so they’d worked out some simple hand signals.

When Twist reached back and patted Shay on the head, she felt him move away, and she followed, crawling down the length of the building on her hands and knees. West had emphasized that they should move slowly, because quickness was more noticeable in the dark.

The building was two hundred feet long, but it took almost no time to crawl down its length. When they got to the end, West peeked around the corner of the building, moved back, and whispered, “Nothing.”

They’d taken blankets from the mom-and-pop motel—Twist left a hundred-dollar bill on the bed—and tied them around their waists. Now they untied them and put them on the grass and sat on them; West knew from experience that they would get cold and stiff if they were sitting directly on the ground.

Shay and X settled on her blanket, and the men ahead of and behind her stirred around, getting settled.

They waited.

West had warned against talking—sounds carry at night—so they simply sat, staring at the lights of the city a few hundred yards away. The stars were brighter than in Los Angeles, but not much,
and nothing like they were in the mountains of Oregon or Idaho. Once, Shay thought she saw movement in the empty field they were facing, but decided it had been a mirage. A pickup truck bounced around a building a quarter mile away, seemingly pointlessly, and disappeared the same way it had come.

They could hear trucks on freeways, and that was about it.

Shay got cold, as West had predicted, and snuggled up to X, who seemed to like it. She was scared, though she wouldn’t have admitted it. She’d been scared the night she’d been cornered by the two thugs in the Hollywood alley, but only after the fact: when she’d been cornered, she hadn’t had time to think about it, to be frightened.

Waiting here in the dark, she did have time to think. And brood. West thought Odin was inside—and he didn’t seem optimistic about the prospect of finding him unharmed.

They’d been sitting for an hour and fifteen minutes when Twist’s cell phone vibrated. He had the only phone among them—the rest had been left in the cars, so they couldn’t accidentally go off at a bad time, or be dropped or lost or captured and used as evidence. Twist whispered, “Cade,” then looked at the screen, which he held inside his blanket. “Truck coming.”

“Stay with the plan,” West whispered. He reached inside his jacket and produced a pistol.

“Coming in,” Twist said as another message arrived. “Cade’s going for the truck.”

“Everybody cool,” West whispered. “Let’s get the nylons on.”

Shay fumbled with the mask; up to this point, the raid hadn’t seemed real. The mask came down over her eyes and chin, and she
tucked in every strand of hair the way Odin had said she should. Her stomach clutched and she began to breathe hard. It was going to happen, and not some other time, but
now
.…

Then they heard it, a rumbling engine—a delivery truck. Lights flashed by the end of the building and then disappeared as the truck dropped down the ramp to the door. When the lights were gone, West said, “Move.”

They left the blankets and crawled out after him, all but Shay, who stayed behind the corner of the building with the dog—X, with his gray coat, was too visible in the reflected light coming up from the ramp.

The three men crouched behind a low retaining wall above the ramp. Shay peered around the corner, keeping her head low to the ground, and saw West do a slow peek over the wall. He pulled back and they all listened, heard the delivery truck’s door roll up, and then two men talking. West did another slow peek, then lowered his head and nodded at Cruz and Twist.

“When I say,” he whispered.

He peeked again, and again, and then, “Ready … go.”

The three of them crossed the wall and dropped the eight feet to the cement driveway. Twist’s leg gave way and he went down on a knee, but West and Cruz kept going around the truck and Twist scrambled back to his feet with the use of his cane.

Cruz went around the front of the truck, West around the back, where they found two men in work clothes loading a dolly with cardboard boxes full of canned food.

West, intimidating in the mask and behind the muzzle of his gun, growled, “Hands over your heads and keep your mouths shut.”

One of the men said as he raised his hands, “Man, we got nothing here but food. There’s nothing to steal.”

“Shut up,” West said. He looked and sounded like a killer. He said to Cruz, “Chains.”

Cruz stepped up behind the first man and said, “If you fight it, you get hurt. If you don’t, you’re okay.” His accent had changed: gone cholo.

The trucker bought it: “Man, don’t hurt me.…”

Cruz threw a loop of chain around his waist, locked it with a padlock, then threaded the other end through the truck’s bumper and locked that, too. “Now you,” he said to the second man.

While the men were attacking the truck, Shay and X had jogged around the ramp’s barrier wall and down the driveway into the loading area. As they came down the ramp, Cruz finished locking the second man to the bumper. That done, Cruz patted both of the men down, found no weapons, but took two cell phones. “I’ll put them by the door, where you can get them back,” he said to the men; back to the L.A. accent. Attached to the short chains, the men wouldn’t be able to get into the truck even if there was a weapon or a phone inside.

Twist was at the door and risked a peek. Inside was another room, with a steel door on the other side, but the door was ajar.

He said to West, “There’s an interior steel door, but the door’s open, if nobody pulls it shut.”

“Then let’s get inside before they close it,” West said, and he led the way into the building; Twist was right behind him, then Shay and X, and then Cruz.

They were in a small room with concrete-block walls painted an
institutional yellow, smelling of disinfectant and something else—something bad. A steel door led to two hallways, going away from each other at right angles. West peeked, then pulled his head back. “There’s a room with a glass cage, twenty feet down the hall, and a guy inside,” he whispered.

Twist: “Hold the door. I’ll be right back.”

Twist went out to the truck and was back a minute later pushing the dolly, on which he’d piled two extra boxes, so that they were nearly head-high. “Good,” West said. “I’ll take it from here.”

West put the gun in his jacket pocket and pushed the dolly through the door and down the hall. At the lighted office, he stopped, reached around, and tried the doorknob, which was unlocked. The man at the desk looked up when the door opened, and West stepped out from behind the boxes and pointed his pistol at the man’s nose.

“Make any noise and I’ll kill you,” he said.

Cruz, Twist, Shay, and X hustled down the hall to the office, and when the man saw them, he looked at the dog and then Shay and said, “You’re that chick with the dog.” And to Twist, “You’re some kinda artist, you won’t kill me.”

He’d had his hands over his head but now he reached out to a red switch and switch box on the far wall, and Twist snapped, “Don’t touch it,” but when the man continued reaching toward the alarm switch, Twist smashed him across the face with the cane. The man went to the floor screaming, blood pouring from a broken nose.

The man tried to roll up, but X made a lunging move at him and he fell back. Shay choked up on his chain. “Good boy,” she said.

West stood over the dazed man, went through his pockets, and finally pulled out an electronic key card. “Let’s see what this does.”

Cruz was chaining the man when Cade ran in through the door
and hissed, “Truck’s ready.” West said to Twist, “You and Cruz go that way, Shay and I’ll go this way, yell if you find anything,” and pointed down the intersecting halls. “Cade, start pulling files. Hard drives if you can get them.… Any records …”

They went running, Twist and Cruz one way, Shay and West the other. There were three steel doors on the inner walls of the hall that West and Shay took: one was a maintenance closet, one gave access to building power supply panels, and the third was locked.

“Try the card,” Shay said. Just then, Twist reappeared at the end of the hall, followed by Cruz, and called, “It’s a dead end down there—keyed door, no electronics.”

Shay ran the card through the door lock and a green LED blinked at them, and West pulled the door open and stepped through. A woman was standing halfway down the hall with an odd-looking handgun and she aimed it at them and pulled the trigger and West said, “Taser!” and dropped and dragged Shay down and the Taser element bounced off the wall and Shay screamed, “Get her!” and X went down the hall like a leopard and jumped at the woman’s face. The woman blocked him with her forearm, but the impact from the eighty-pound dog knocked her down, screaming, and the dog dragged at her arm and then Shay arrived and shouted, “No, no more!”

The dog wouldn’t stop and Shay grabbed him by the collar and the woman half stood and struck at Shay, hitting her in the mouth, and Shay went down and the woman scratched at her eyes, but Shay rolled away and held on to the dog as West backhanded the woman, who fell flat on her back.

“Stay down!” West pointed his gun at the woman’s face and asked, “Where’s Odin Remby?”

The dog was still snarling at the woman as Shay scrambled back to her feet. The woman, frightened, stuttered, “Right here, right here …,” and waved her hand down the hall. “But there are no keys. The keys are upstairs.…”

“There are little windows,” Shay said, and she ran to the first one and looked into a room that was empty except for a cot. She ran to the next, followed by Twist, and heard West say to Cruz, who’d caught up with them, “Pat her down and chain her to the door handle.”

An Asian man was sitting on a cot in the second room, staring at the door. He seemed dazed, as though he’d just woken. As she looked through the window, Shay realized that it was silvered on her side, one-way glass, and the man couldn’t see her. Just next to the window was a square metal flap. She moved it and found a speaking hole covered with mesh. She called, “Who are you?”

The man stood up and said something unintelligible: Korean? She didn’t know.

“Not Odin, keep moving,” Twist said. He was already running to the next window. Another Asian man, this one standing, his eyes wide with fear. They’d heard the screaming down the hall.… Would somebody else be coming?

The next room, and Shay was looking at Odin. He was lying flat on a cot but had lifted his head enough that he could look at the door. He was barefoot, dressed in what looked like yoga pants and a T-shirt.

She pushed the speaking flap. “Odin? Odin?”

Odin said, “Shay?! Oh my God, what are you doing?”

“We’re getting you out.”

“How?” He pushed himself up, but then fell back.

“He’s hurt,” Shay said to Twist.

West hurried up. “We’ve got to move, we’ve got to move—”

“Open this door,” Shay said.

West ran the key in the lock, got a red light. Tried again, another red light. “Stand back.”

He kicked the door, a karate-style straight-thrust kick, and the door rattled but held. “Again,” he said with gritted teeth, and kicked it as hard as he could. The door held.

Shay said, “The dolly …”

She ran to the office, got the metal dolly, and pushed it back down the hall. West kicked the door again, and again it held.

“Battering ram,” Shay said when she got there. “All of us.”

West, Twist, Cruz, and Shay picked the heavy steel dolly off the floor and smashed it against the door. This time, the door bent and the glass window shattered. “Again,” she screamed.

They hit it again and again and again, and with the last impact, the door blew open, the lock actually tearing out a piece of the doorjamb.

Instantly an alarm began screaming down the hallways.

“Ah, shit,” Twist groaned. Shay pushed past him into the cell.

Odin was on the floor inside, trying to crawl to the door. His face was one large bruise. Shay knelt beside him. “How bad, how bad?” she cried.

“Pretty bad,” Odin groaned. “Did this water thing to me.… Can’t walk.”

West said, “We’ll carry him. Let’s go.…”

Odin said, “No. No. There’s a girl in the next room. Get her out, get her out—”

Shay said, “Odin, we don’t have time—”

“Have to, have to, have to,” Odin said. “They did something to her brain, they’ll kill her, we’ve got to get her out.”