Escape
Peng awoke abruptly in the darkness. He looked at Matt’s watch. It was nearly three in the morning. The breathing in the room was soft and deep. He was sure everyone was asleep. He rose silently from his bed, made quick work of the locks, and was outside in a matter of minutes.
The openness of the space beyond the door nearly overwhelmed him. He had never seen a room so large and empty. When they’d brought him here, he’d been anticipating seeing Hope and Jin and had taken special notice of the locks, so he hadn’t fully grasped the enormity of his surroundings. It reminded him of the sky at night when he sneaked out of the house.
He pushed himself against the wall and tried to fade back into the shadows. There was a table with a lamp at the far end and a couple of chairs with no one in them. There was another table with several chairs directly in front of him, where they had eaten earlier in the evening. Other than that, the room was devoid of furniture.
He moved toward the table with the lamp, careful to keep his steps soft. He had the feeling that any noise might echo throughout the entire chamber. Permelia had said they were at an abandoned airstrip and this was a hangar where airplanes had been kept and serviced in the past. Peng would have liked to examine the airplanes to see how they worked, but there were no airplanes here now. Only the one lamp. The air smelled like dust that had been recently swept out of an old garage.
As he neared the lamp, he noticed two doors at this end of the building. One looked to be the door to an interior room, similar to the one in which Hope, Jin, and Permelia were sleeping. The other led to the outside and had a small window in it. Peng could see shadows moving through the glass and thought he heard faint voices. He crept up next to the door and moved to where he could see out the window into the darkness. Two men stood talking about thirty yards away—Dempsey, and a man with a beard, whom Peng had seen earlier. Peng had the feeling that if he blinked, the man might disappear.
Peng was careful to move slowly. A sudden darkening of the window might draw the attention of the two men, but he nearly jumped out of his shoes when he heard a sound behind him. He waited for someone to grab him and throw him to the ground as they spoke threats into his ear with stinking breath. But this was not the orphanage, and there was no one behind him. He heard the sound again, a low groan coming from behind the door by the table. The door had a lock like the ones on his room, but it also had a padlock on the outside.
Permelia had said they were holding Uncle Zack here somewhere. This must be the place. He took a quick peek out the door and saw that the men were moving away from the building as they talked, then he placed his attention on the other door. Getting through the padlock would have been a problem from the inside of the room, but it only took him a few minutes to release it from the six-inch piece of plate metal that spanned the door. The lock on the door itself was even easier. He’d stolen some bobby pins from the sink in the motor home, which made perfect picking tools.
He stepped inside the room and saw Zack lying on a hospital bed, an IV cart next to him and a tube running into his hand. There were straps across his arms, legs, and chest securing him to the bed, but that wasn’t the reason he hadn’t escaped. His eyes were rolling around in his head like he was trying very hard to focus but couldn’t.
Peng studied the setup. He didn’t know a lot about medicine, but he’d had his appendix removed, and he remembered that his pain medication had been fed through the transparent plastic bags on top of the IV cart. There was an empty bag on the table, but the one that hung on Zack’s cart looked mostly full. They must have changed it recently, which meant they might not come back and check it for a while. Maybe not until tomorrow morning. He could remove the IV from Zack’s hand or cut the tube running from the bag, but if anyone came in, it would be obvious that it had been tampered with.
Peng looked for options. There was a roll of adhesive tape sitting on the cart next to Zack’s head. Peng carefully removed the tube connected to a shorter section plugged into the back of Zack’s hand. The liquid drug pulsed out of the end of the tube in slow, steady drips, like grains of sand counting out the seconds in an hourglass. An additional piece of tubing on the table had a blue connector like the one stuck in Zack. He plugged the IV into this one and taped it next to the one running into Zack’s veins. He angled the drip so it would go down along Zack’s side and into the mattress. It would soak everything, but the men might not notice it unless they looked carefully.
Peng unbuckled the straps holding Zack down and then rebuckled them loosely. They still looked like they were in place, but if Zack woke up, he could easily escape them.
Peng took one last look at the room, making sure it appeared the way it had when he’d come in, and then he opened the door a crack and scanned for danger before stepping outside. The large room was still empty. He could leave Zack’s door unlocked, but the padlock was a problem. He went back inside and pulled off a few inches of the adhesive tape. He came back out and stuffed it down into the padlock hole. When he moved the bar of the lock back into the hole, it held but didn’t lock. If Zack pushed hard on the door from the inside, it would swing open.
Peng moved back to the outside door and found the two men still talking, now nearly fifty yards away, their backs to him. They were near the corner of a fence that would take them outside his vision.
Peng took a deep breath and slipped outside the door to see if he could determine what they were talking about. He waited, crouching in the dark for a few moments, and listened for the footsteps that would tell him he had alerted the men to his presence. There were no footsteps. Only the faint voices of the men, who started to move away from him again.
Peng found the shadows and made his way toward them. If he could hear what they were saying, he might be able to find out something useful for Matt. The men rounded the corner of a small outbuilding, and their voices no longer moved away from him. Peng crept up to the corner of the building to a place where he could hear without being seen.
“So tell me what’s going on.” The voice was Dempsey’s. “It’s clear something is bothering you. You’ve been antsy all day. Normally you’re so cool that most people wonder if you’re human.”
The other man didn’t say anything for several moments, and Peng wondered if he had arrived just in time for the conversation to end. Then the man sighed and spoke. “It’s this job,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
“I haven’t liked most of the jobs we’ve done together. It doesn’t seem to have bothered you before,” Dempsey said.
“This one’s different. The woman, the old lady . . . the girl. We have no way of knowing how things will go down tomorrow. Yehudi’s a certified psycho. I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts shooting as soon as he steps off the plane.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen. Yehudi’s mother is crazier than he is, and word is she’s ordered him to bring them back to the homeland so she can observe the bloodletting in person. He’s going to want to keep them alive.”
“And you’re going to let them go?”
“We’ve got our orders. Our job is to capture the video. That’s it. Once that’s done, you can take out Yehudi. I doubt the prince will have any need for hostages after that. We get the evidence, the prince flies away angry, and we’re done with this job.”
“Provided Yehudi doesn’t take you out first.”
“That’s why you’re going to be holed up in your nest with a sniper rifle. I’m counting on you to keep me alive. And I’m counting on them not spotting you. Just focus on doing your job.”
“What about the women and the kid?”
“What about them? Once we get what we need, they are no longer relevant. They can safely go back to where they came from.”
“And what if it’s a choice between their safety and completing the job?”
“What do you think?”
“The job always comes first. No matter what.”
“No matter what,” Dempsey confirmed.
There was a moment of silence, then finally Dempsey asked, “How are the cameras coming?”
“They’re placed and well camouflaged.”
“I want you to turn them on now.”
“Are we expecting an early arrival?”
“I’m expecting the plane to arrive at noon tomorrow as planned, but you know me.”
“Always have a plan B?”
“You got it.”
“Okay, then. I’ll go turn on the cameras. And, Dempsey . . .”
“Yeah.”
“Watch your back tomorrow.”
“I won’t need to,” Dempsey said. “You’ll be watching it for me.”
The talking seemed to be over. Both men began to move.
Peng barely had time to scamper out of sight as Dempsey made his way back toward the main building. It would be impossible for him to return to the room without being seen. But then again, Peng had never really meant to return. He promised Hope he wouldn’t leave, and he would keep that promise, but he could probably be of more help to Matt on the outside rather than locked up in that small room. Still, he was ashamed at the disappointment Hope would feel when she awoke and found him gone.
When Dempsey was far enough away, Peng sneaked back around the building and moved in the direction the bearded man had gone. At first he thought he’d lost him, and then he spotted an elusive dark shape moving toward a small grouping of buildings that sat near the edge of the runway. One appeared to be an old radio tower, a place where a flight controller could watch a plane come in and give directions.
The bearded man looked around before climbing the tower stairs. At the top, he moved back and forth in front of the windows, and it looked like he was speaking to someone on a phone.
After about five minutes, he came down the stairs again and melted into the shadows. Peng tried to follow him, but he was just gone. Peng stood in the shadows for a very long time. He wasn’t sure what to do. He tried to process what he’d heard. Apparently there was a plane arriving tomorrow at noon with a prince on board, as well as a man named Yehudi, who wanted to either kill Peng’s family on the spot or take them with him and kill them in front of his mother. There was also something about cameras that Peng didn’t fully understand. These men had a job to do that involved recording video, and once the job was done, it sounded like they might allow Peng’s family to go free—if they were still alive. It was all very confusing. He tried to think about it like it was a machine, gears connecting with other gears, all working together for some end purpose. But without knowing what the purpose was, the machinery didn’t make any sense.
After a while, he decided he needed to see more of the individual pieces. Maybe if he could see all of the parts laid out, he might be able to put the whole picture together.
He moved quickly and silently to the tower the bearded man had been in. There was dust everywhere, and Peng had to fight back a sneeze. There were cameras in the tower too, but not the type he was expecting.
There were three of them, all mounted on tripods, with camouflage webbing covering them.
Peng lifted the webbing and nearly gasped. The brand name Arri stood out in bold letters along the side. These were not just cameras; these were Hollywood movie cameras. Each of them probably cost about $65,000. Technology was Peng’s hobby, and cameras were a specialty. He could tell the difference between the models and could even list which ones had shot the different Oscar-nominated films. These particular cameras were some of the best out there—the ones the biggest studios used. But why would these men need Hollywood cameras?
There was a small monitor along the wall that wasn’t turned on. Neither were the cameras, which confused Peng since he had heard Dempsey’s instructions to the bearded man. The cameras were all plugged into an eight-plug outlet surge protector, but the button on the surge protector was turned off. Peng hesitated for only a moment. He flipped the switch and watched the cameras and monitors come to life. All three of them were focused on an area in front of the hangar, where Peng assumed an airplane would arrive tomorrow. He followed the wires from the cameras and noticed two black cylindrical objects that looked like guns pointed toward the same area as the cameras. He knew immediately what they were—shotgun microphones. This meant they wanted sound as well as video. Just like Hollywood. They would likely have additional microphones somewhere close to the subjects if they wanted the audio to be cinema quality.
One last bit of camouflage webbing hung off to the side. There was a tripod there too, but it was empty. And it wasn’t built for a camera. This was where the bearded man would be watching the action through his scope. It was the sniper’s nest. Peng looked around for the rifle and saw a long, dark case lying on the floor. Why had the man not placed the rifle on the tripod? Maybe that was something he would do later. Peng moved to the sniper’s nest and settled in to see what the sniper would see.
He tried to envision what would happen tomorrow when the plane arrived. It would taxi to the point where the cameras were aimed. Peng didn’t know what size the plane would be, but he guessed it would be a small private jet. The door would open, and the stairs would extend to the ground before the people exited—the prince and Yehudi. Maybe others. Probably men with guns. Dempsey would come out to meet them, and the cameras would be recording them and their conversations the whole time. The bearded man would be up here in the sniper’s nest, and when Dempsey got what he wanted, the man would shoot Yehudi and allow the prince to leave in the airplane. Maybe Dempsey would then allow Peng’s family to leave as well. It was all like some big movie production, scripted down to the last detail.
Peng went to turn off the switch on the surge protector and then stopped himself. He still felt like something wasn’t right. Dempsey had asked the bearded man to start the cameras recording. The bearded man had come up here, but he hadn’t turned the cameras on. Peng looked back at the empty sniper’s nest and wondered again why the man hadn’t set everything up now. Maybe he was disobeying for a reason. Maybe he knew more about cameras and guns than Dempsey. Maybe he knew they would function better if he set them up closer to the time when he knew they would be used.
Or maybe he was operating off a different script. One where Yehudi was not hindered from taking his victims and that didn’t have a happy ending. The man’s responses to Dempsey had made Peng suspicious, and all of this was getting complicated. He looked at the wires again. To someone else, they might look like a mass of confusion. To Peng, they all made perfect sense. He wished he could read the paths of people the way he could read the wires.
The wires didn’t connect logically. Wires that were supposed to attach didn’t. Wires that should be doing one thing were doing something else. Cameras that were supposed to be recording had been turned off.
Peng looked at the cameras one more time, and it was as if he were seeing them with new eyes. He found the record buttons and turned them on. If the bearded man came back, he would know someone had been here, but Peng wasn’t too worried. He was pretty sure the bearded man wasn’t coming back.
Then he noticed the bag of explosives in the corner.