“We’re set to jam the comms?”
“Yes. He’ll have work-arounds, but it’ll take a few minutes to implement them. It might be tight, but it should give us enough time.”
The voice that came through the slate sounded male, but Eckhart wasn’t naive. With the free software on the Feeds that could be used to mask a person’s identity, it could have been veritably anyone.
“It should or it will be enough time?” Eckhart said.
“It will. We’ll only need thirty seconds or so. And once the armored car is inside the semi, there won’t be any way for him to radio out.”
“The bed of the truck—”
“Yes. It’s been prepped. No messages coming in. No messages going out. Like I told you earlier.”
“And no casualties?”
“Not if everything goes according to plan.”
“You know things don’t always go according to plan. That’s asking a lot.”
The man was quiet for a moment. “As long as the driver listens to instructions, as long as he doesn’t fire at us, we won’t have any reason to take aggressive action against him.”
“That’s not how she’ll see it.”
“But that’s how it is.”
“The tarpaulin you’re using?”
He sighed. “We’ve been through this before.”
“Well, go through it again.”
“Reinforced Kevlar mesh. It’s nearly impenetrable. He won’t be able to see through it, shoot through it, slice through it. And once it’s in place, he isn’t going to be able to open his door or get out.”
“But he’ll be able to breathe?”
Clear irritation in his voice now: “All of this is in the—”
“I want to hear it again with my own ears. I want you to say it.”
“There’ll be plenty of air as long as he follows instructions.”
“You’re banking an awful lot on him following instructions.”
“You said no casualties. Then this is the way it has to be done. He listens, he lives. He disobeys, well, there are going to be consequences.”
A long silence. “Alright,” Eckhart told him at last. “Make the call. Put it into play. We want it done on Saturday morning after they drive up from Portland so we have time to take care of things before the press conference.”
* * *
When Ripley woke up, he was in a chair, his hands restrained behind him, his ankles tied to the chair’s stout legs. He blinked and tried to regroup, but he wasn’t thinking clearly. Everything was still a blur.
His first instinct was to pull free, but when he tried, even with the augmented strength from his artificial arms, he couldn’t snap the ropes. He had the sense that whoever had abducted him probably knew what he was capable of.
Unable to free himself, he tried to take in his surroundings, but the space around him was a vacuum of black. The hint of steady, circulating air passing across his cheek told him that he was inside a building, but other than that he couldn’t get any real sense of the size of the room.
There was a faint touch of light behind him and his eyes were doing their best to capture what they could. He sensed a few, vague, indiscernible gray shapes nearby. They might have been pieces of furniture or crouched figures; he would have no way to tell until his eyes became more accustomed to the low light.
He tugged again at the restraints.
Useless.
So, that meant that—
All at once, a harsh light came on only four or five meters in front of his face, aimed directly at him.
He squinched his eyes shut and turned his head to the side, but it didn’t help much and the blinding light cut through his eyelids.
“You’re going to be sorry you did this,” he said defiantly.
An electronically-masked voice addressed him. “Why didn’t you take care of Miss Hathaway?”
Ripley squinted. The voice came from somewhere beyond the light source so he had no way to see who might’ve been speaking to him—if it was the woman from the bar or someone else.
“The opportunity didn’t present itself,” he said.
“You were told to—”
“Agent Vernon is looking into her,” he cut in, avoiding the implication that he was incompetent at his job. “I think we can fuel his suspicions that she was involved.”
“Nick Vernon?”
“Yes. Did you trash her place?”
The voice was silent.
“Was it you?” Ripley pressed.
“All you need to concern yourself with right now is following orders.”
“Why am I here? Why did you bring me here?”
“You understand why this is so important? Why the timing matters?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“We’re looking at a shift in society as a whole. An entirely different way of being. When the stakes are this high, we can’t have anyone off doing his own thing.”
“I wasn’t off doing my own thing.”
Someone moved behind him and he craned his neck to see who it was, but all he could make out was the outline of a medium-height figure dressed all in black. Momentarily, a knife appeared, and the person reached forward and carefully angled the blade against the front of Ripley’s neck, just below his Adam’s apple.
The voice behind the light said, “All you need to do is keep suspicion on her for the next two days. After that, it won’t matter anymore. Once this is over, no one will remember Kestrel Hathaway.”
“Just Phoenix,” Ripley said softly, avoiding moving his throat too much for fear that the blade would slice through his skin.
“Everything happens Saturday in Cascade Falls. Until then, you will await further instructions and find opportunities to do what you’re told to, whether they conveniently present themselves to you or not.”