“Walker?”
Monica was tense; she saw Walker’s face and body language and she knew that things had changed.
“This place, it has an attic,” he stated rather than asked as he scanned the hallway to the front door. He could sense movement out there. A slight shift, of something. It came from being hunted before. A sixth sense. He looked to her.
Monica saw the shift in his eyes. The danger. A call to action. “Yes.”
Walker looked down at her hands. Her phone.
Monica looked to it. Then she knew, too.
“I didn’t call anyone—”
“You didn’t have to,” Walker said, and headed for the stairs, taking her hand as he did, the phone clattering to the floorboards.
They heard the noise at the front door as they neared the stairs. A knock. Three taps. Thumps. A heavy fist, gloved knuckles. Purposeful. A big, strong guy with a big, heavy fist, hitting the big, strong and heavy hardwood door. It might hold up to one or two decent shoulderings. Certainly not any kind of police ram. Certainly not against one or more big guys intent on gaining entry. And they’d be approaching via the back door too, and that would last less than a second against an attack.
Walker didn’t stop moving. Up the stairs, as quietly as he could, Monica close behind. He scanned the scene, the landing ahead: four doors running off a small hallway. Three bedrooms and a bathroom, he figured. Windows out to the veranda. But not high enough, not far enough away. Too easily intercepted. They needed to buy time. Seconds would do, a minute or two would be ideal.
Knocking at the door again. Louder this time.
Monica let go of his hand, overtook him and headed for a pull-down cord near the end of the hall at the back of the house. It revealed a little trapdoor, with a ladder that folded down. She led the way up, Walker a step behind. He pulled the ladder up, and the trap door, taking a moment to pull the cord up into the roof space to impede anyone following.
Inside the attic, Monica left the lights off without being asked. Smart; the light would have spilled out the louvers front and back. Instead, there was near complete darkness inside as Walker crept along a board to the louvers, which drew in a little light from outside. They were made of pine or Oregon, a soft timber, painted several times over the decades but currently light gray, like a dove. An inch thick and two deep, spaced an inch apart, maybe twenty inches square. Backed with screen-wire to keep insects out. Good enough to see through.
Walker looked down at the rear courtyard. Looking from here out on to the dark space out there was different from being in the lit kitchen and looking out. From here, he could distinguish far more detail in the shadows. And there was movement. He made out three guys. Big. Dressed in black. Paramilitary types. Like a SWAT team. But FBI tactical guys didn’t wear black, not since Waco. One was at the back door, a few feet away, ready to breach, the other two scanning windows and ready to push through the door when it was blasted open. Impossible to know whom they represented, and he had neither the time nor inclination to find out.
“What do we do?” Monica asked in a whisper.
Walker said, “We wait.”
“How long for?”
“Not long.” Walker could no longer see the three guys at the back—they’d moved in close to the back door and were now crowded under the awning that covered the rear stairs. That meant the wait was pretty much over.
Monica said, “Who are they?”
“No one we want to meet right now,” Walker said, shifting his weight and ripping off the screen covering. It was quiet but made a cloud of dust.
“You think they’ll go away?” Monica whispered.
“No.”
“Then why did you say—”
The power in the neighborhood went out a split second before the sound of the front and back doors being smashed in reverberated through the house. The men would be inside now, hunting them with night vision. Monica stifled a noise—not so much a scream as shock, that someone unknown would enter her house in such a violent way, figuring that she was trapped up here in the attic space.
Walker grabbed hold of two louvers at a time and pulled them out, leaving a pile of kindling at their feet. He pushed his torso through the open space and hauled himself up onto the roof. He got good purchase on the slate tiles and hung over the edge, dropping his arms down toward the access to the attic. He felt Monica reach up and he grabbed her wrists. He braced with his legs splayed wide apart as he felt her full weight; maybe just over half his weight. He used his core strength and legs and arms as one to pull her up, quickly.
“Now what?” she asked, in a crouch on the ridge-line next to him.
“I’m going to hold onto you, and you need to follow me, side by side, and keep going,” Walker said. “When I squeeze you jump, okay?”
“What?”
“That way.” Walker pointed to the house next door. “We run and jump and we keep going until we get to the side street.”
A second’s hesitation, then she said, “Okay.”
They ran down the slope of her roof, Walker holding her left wrist, and near the end—
They jumped onto the neighbor’s roof, the void maybe two meters. Monica landed easily, light on her toes, and was already running up the slope. Walker’s right foot dislodged a slate tile and got caught in the void beneath and he had to let go of her—he motioned her on.
He glanced back as he freed his foot. Nothing to see.
It took him a second to regain his balance and get up, scrambling up the roof after having to rebuild his momentum.
They met at the ridge, and this time Monica grabbed Walker’s wrist. He nodded and they set off. There were six houses ahead, all similar in design and position on the block. This street and the two either side had been blacked out—streetlights too. And it was radial—a circle around the entire block, as though an eclipse of all power and lights had occurred with Monica’s house at the epicenter, about three hundred yards in all directions. Walker looked up. He couldn’t see it, but he knew that there must be a drone up there with an EMP.
The Protecting Individuals from Mass Aerial Surveillance Act was supposed to protect private citizens from federal agencies conducting aerial surveillance, thus preserving some semblance of Fourth Amendment rights. But the sharpest end of the stick always had some leeway with such laws and rules.
That meant that these guys were federal, military or intelligence, with unfettered access to the nation’s best toys.
And the gloves were off.
Walker and Monica continued their transit, and at the final house they stopped at the other side of the roofing ridge, crouching low, holding onto roof tiles.
Walker looked back—he couldn’t see anyone out on any roofs. Nor the street. He could just make out a black Suburban parked out the front of Monica’s; it hadn’t been there when Walker arrived. And another at the far end of the street.
“What now?”
“We get to my car.”
“Yes, but how do we get down from here?”
“Drain pipe.”
Monica looked at him, and even in the darkness he could read her expression. “What?”
“The tubular things attached to the guttering at the corners of houses.”
“I meant you can’t be serious.”
“Or I could kick out the louvers and we go through the attic,” Walker said. “How well do you know your neighbors?”
“Not that well.”
“Okay, well, Plan A it is,” Walker said, headed for the drain pipe at the front corner. He went first. It was made of plastic, with clamps and screws into the timber cladding of the house and the timber frame beneath. When Walker was halfway down, Monica started her descent. His feet touched the roof of the front porch and he let go of the drain pipe, then dropped down to the garden bed.
Just as he caught Monica as she came down, two sharp bangs rang through the night. Flash-bang grenades. The guys were entering the attic and wanted to stun whoever was hiding up there.
“What was—”
“Come on,” Walker said. He led Monica through the front gate and along the footpath and turned up the hill, toward his car.
“Where are we going?”
“Away from here.”
Walker unlocked his door and leaned over and unlocked Monica’s. As she climbed in he put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn the engine over. Instead, he changed the gear into neutral and took the park brake off, then stepped back out of the car and, a hand on the steering wheel and his feet on the road, pushed. Once the inertia built up and the car was rolling down the hill he got back in and closed the door.
They rolled down the hill with no engine power and no lights. The steering was heavy but he held it in a straight line, and the lack of engine noise allowed them to avoid alerting those back at the house. They had covered four blocks by the time the hill started to flatten out at the bottom, and he pressed the brakes for the first time. As soon as the car slowed he turned the key and shifted to second and gave it gas, put the headlights on and took the first right.
Monica stared over her shoulder, only looking ahead once they’d made another turn, to the left, where Walker unwound the engine to put a bit of immediate distance between them and those at her house.
“You okay?” Walker asked her. He was driving close to the limit, observing the road signs and traffic signals, heading east for the highway.
“Who were they?”
“Feds.”
“FBI?”
“I doubt it. This has become militarized.”
“The military? This is a civilian problem.”
Walker turned the radio up high to hear over the thrum of the Cuda’s big block V8. The newscaster was talking about what might happen in twenty minutes’ time. Monica sunk down into her seat.