Professor Roberto Kahn left his Constitutional law class at noon. As he headed across the plaza in the growing heat, he noticed a small disheveled figure step outside the shade of the engineering building. A young woman, wearing a baseball cap, her black hair mostly tied back, a rumpled, denim shirt and worn jeans was walking toward him. She carried a backpack, and her luminous gray eyes were unmistakable.
“I know you,” Roberto said.
“Hello, Roberto Kahn. You gave me your card.”
“Yes…on the ferry from Shaw. Helen Snowfeather, right?”
“You can call me Snowfeather,” she said, dropping the bag on the hot pavement.
“You look tired,” Roberto said. “No offense.” He smiled warmly. “I was just going for lunch. Please come along.” Professor Kahn reached down and scooped up Snowfeather’s bag.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ve been hauling that thing forever.”
“Where are you headed?” he asked. Snowfeather walked along in silence, her eyes tearing. “Whoops. I’ve asked the wrong question. Sorry.”
“I am so tired,” she said. “God, I so hate the bus.”
“I should have asked—What are you running from?”
——
Five minutes later, they were in Roberto’s car and he was dialing home. “Hi,” he said. “How would you like to feed me and one renegade radical activist?” Listening with his earpiece, he winked broadly at Snowfeather. “Canned chili and iced tea?” he asked her. Snowfeather nodded vigorously. “Sounds like a hit,” Roberto said to the phone. “See you in ten.”
“Your wife?” she asked.
“No. Deborah died of cancer four years ago,” he said. “That was my son, Isaac. I’m home-schooling him for one more year.”
“Home-schooling without being home?”
“It’s quite a trick. I have access to the entire University library online. I just assign Isaac homework, he does it, usually on time and I grade it, usually fairly. The kid is smart.”
“Like his dad.”
“Like his mom. Look, I am not going to pry. You obviously need refuge. We have a guest room with its own bath. I work long hours at my two jobs, and you will have the place to yourself pretty much because Isaac studies in his bedroom when he’s not out with his friends. So if you have no other plans…”
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
——
At 1:00 A.M., A limousine left downtown Seattle carrying a man with a missing hand, and a storm swept through Vancouver, Canada, bringing tree-snapping wind and horizontal rain.
At 4:22 A.M., on a narrow tree-lined avenue in Vancouver, water was still cascading from the roofs of the old craftsman homes, turning street gutters into creeks. The windshield of the limousine was sheeted with running water, the lights at the approaching intersection only dimly visible. Tree branches littered the pavement and the old style street lamps were shrouded in fog.
In the back seat, a bandaged and half-conscious man stirred. “Where am I?” Dr. John Owen asked.
While Ken Wang drove, Colonel Dornan twisted to face the rear. “It’s me, John.” He peered down at Owen. “It’s Bill. Can you see me?”
“What am I doing here?”
“John, you passed out on the street in Seattle. You’d lost a lot of blood. Ken found you in a hospital. Hang in there, buddy. We’re almost to a safe place, your townhouse in Vancouver.”
“Good.”
“We’re close, John. Real close. How you doin’?” There was a long silence. Dornan peered into the darkness. “John?”
“Elisabeth. Gotta protect Elisabeth.”
Dornan turned to the front and looked at Ken. “He’s right,” he whispered. “They’ll be after her, too.”
“I warned her, but I will follow up,” Ken said. “As soon as we get where we’re going.”
“Is that you, Ken?” John’s voice was weakening.
“Yes, sir.” Another silence.
“Won’t be long now, John, about one more block,” Dornan said, leaning over the back seat again. He felt John’s forehead, then turned back to face the front. “Take it very slow through here, Ken, until we can see our people out in front of the place.” In the driver’s seat, Ken Wang complied, squinting through the rippling windshield. “Use the brights,” Dornan said. Ken complied again. “Do you see them?”
“Not yet,” Ken muttered. “That van is in the way.”
“Two of them should be outside by now,” Dornan said, wiping the fogging glass with a tissue. “There.”
Between the van parked at the curb and the doorway to Owen’s townhouse a figure in a trench coat stood out in the middle of the street and began waving.
“All right,” Ken said, stepping on the gas.
“No. Wait!” Dornan said abruptly, his hand on Ken’s arm. “The van doesn’t look right… Shit! Not ours!”
“Whoops,” Ken said, already braking and shifting. Thirty feet away, the van’s doors opened and six dark figures leapt out, moving smoothly. Their shapes were suddenly lost in the flare of muzzle flashes.
Ken had thrown the limousine into reverse and was accelerating, the sound of its tires squealing overmatched by the piercing, percussive volley of high velocity automatic weapons’ fire. Forty-five bullets pelted the car like hail, denting the armor and turning the reinforced windshield into a maze of cracks. One bullet got through, shattering the rear mirror and lodging in the headliner over the back seat. Dornan reached over Ken and killed the headlights. As the rearward careening limousine reached the corner intersection, Bill shouted, “Keep backing up! On my signal, prepare to turn the steering wheel anti-clockwise for a right turn…NOW!” And before Ken could execute, Dornan yanked the steering wheel sharply left. The limousine screeched around the corner in reverse. “Brake now!” Dornan shouted. The rear bumper crunched the side of a parked Mercedes. “Good. Now forward! Go! Go! Go!”
Ken gunned the engine and the car roared across the intersection, taking another two slugs in the left side as it crossed the line of fire. “Where?” Ken shouted. But Dornan was reaching over the back seat trying to get John to keep his head down.
“Just GO!” Dornan shouted back. Seconds later he slid back into the passenger seat, just as the limousine sped through a red light. Dornan peered at the auto-map screen in the console, punching keys. “Okay, okay. We have some options. Aha. Turn right at the next intersection. I’ll call ahead.” Dornan pulled out his cellphone and keyed a speed-dial number. “This is Bill. We need emergency shelter. Big time. Yes. No bull.” He peered out the window. “Make that five minutes. A black limo… with fresh bullet holes. Thanks.”
“What now?” Ken asked.
“Left at the next intersection. Three miles, then a right. Try not to be too conspicuous.”
“But keep my lights off and hurry, right?”
“I didn’t say it was easy.”
They drove in silence for a while. Dornan turned. “Stay down, John. You doin’ okay?”
“Been better.”
“Hold on, buddy. Won’t be long now.”
“Bleeding again.”
Dornan muttered an inaudible curse. The car droned on through empty streets. Finally, “Here,” he said to Ken, pointing ahead to the right. “That driveway.”
Ken turned into a garage that was a truck repair service housed in a sooty cement block building with four large steel doors. “Pull slowly towards the second bay.” Dornan rolled down the passenger window and looked up and down the deserted street. “Clear,” he said. “Flash your light three times and wait for the door to open.”
Ken flashed the lights. Nothing happened immediately. He glanced nervously out the side window. “Okay,” Dornan said as the door began rising. “Use the parking lights and roll forward.” The limo glided inside. “Stop,” Dornan said. The door began grinding shut. “Lights out.” Ken killed the power. Silence.
A moment of total darkness followed. Only human breathing, the patter of rain outside and the ping of cooling metal could be heard. Then a small light came on inside the shop, emanating from a distant corner, casting large shadows. Seconds later, the overhead fluorescent lamps began to flicker. The lights revealed a huge enclosure. The four bays faced an open area filled with three large trucks in various states of disassembly, surrounded by repair consoles, tools, overhead cables and pipes.
Dornan exited with a flashlight in hand. “Harry,” he called out, “all lights out please.”
“Got it,” a male voice replied. A second later the inside of the limo was an oasis of dim illumination, and Dornan’s flashlight was casting a moving puddle of light on the oil stained floor. Sirens erupted in the distance, while in the back seat of the car John Owen was trying to release his shoulder harness. John fumbled with his remaining hand while trying to keep his right wrist elevated. His face was ash white and the bandages were seeping fresh blood. Ken stepped over and released the catch on the belt.
“Harry!” Dornan shouted, “We’ll be needing that couch in your office right away. And I need you to call Dr. Shor. Have him bring a company nurse, an IV, whatever else he needs. John has lost a hand.”
“Crap,” Harry said from the office doorway. “I’m on it.” He turned on the office desk lamp on, creating a second oasis of light twenty feet away.
Ken followed Harry’s silhouette moving inside the office. He could make out a middle-aged black man dressed in a yellow rain slicker, phone in hand.
“Ken,” Dornan said, “you take John’s left side and I’ll take the right. John? We’ve got to walk you about twenty feet.”
“I’m okay,” John said dully, trying to stand. “You take care of Elisabeth.” Ken was gripping John’s left elbow. “Ken, promise me. Nothing happens to her or the baby.”
“I promise, sir.”
John’s knees buckled and the two men strained to hold him up. “I’m okay,” he rasped.
“Sure you are, my friend.” Dornan said, gently supporting John’s right shoulder. “Sure you are.”