Peak Oil (19 page)

They entered the wire cage as an overhead light switched on automatically. The server’s CPU tower and another unit, probably a backup, stood in a corner. Metal racks containing reels of tape stood in neat ranks, filling the entire room. She strode toward the server and kneeled in front of it. Using the multitool, she managed to snap open a panel in front of the server to reveal its drive bay and USB ports. She stuck the USB drive into a slot, held in the power button, and turned the machine off.

A green light flashed on the backup machine as it whirred into life, taking over the processing load from its partner. Alexa switched on the main server again, and after a few seconds, hundreds of lines of text scrolled over the screen as Frydman’s rogue program infected the boot sector of the machine. The word “COMPLETED” blinked on and off.
 

She removed the small thumb drive and nodded, satisfied. “Okay, that should do it.” She switched the server back on, and it booted up normally. “The rest of the mission is up to Frydman.”

They headed out of the server cage and exited the door. Neil slammed it shut, and they backtracked the way they had come, finally arriving at the door that they had used to enter the refinery.

Neil cracked it open and crept along the wall to the corner of the building as Alexa followed close behind. He peered around the corner and formed a fist, telling her to freeze. He grabbed his right wrist and then made a scratching motion with his fingers.
 

Enemy ahead. And a dog.

And then a siren started with a high-pitched wail.

Neil whipped around and pushed his arm protectively against Alexa, pinning her against the wall. She didn’t think twice. She leaped forward and bolted toward the guard who stood in front of the hole in the fence. He spun around, his two-way radio lifted to his mouth, speaking urgently.

She struck the man on the throat with a straight arm. He went down in a crumpled heap, clutching his windpipe. The dog sat on his haunches, panting, looking up at Alexa and Neil.
 

Good boy.
 

They scrambled through the hole, and Alexa peered over her shoulder as five men with barking guard dogs came racing around the corner.

Gunshots barked as they barreled across the golf course, divots of lawn flying into the air as the shots exploded into the ground around them.
 

“These guys aren’t kidding,” Neil shouted, glancing over his shoulder.
 

They made it to the safety of the forest as bullets shrieked over their heads, stitching holes into the tree trunks. Neil found cover behind a large oak and then peered through the foliage, ducking back as another salvo of bullets slammed into the bark. “Shit. Dogs!” he shouted, removing the Glock from its holster.

“No, Neil,” Alexa shouted, shaking her head.

“Shit, Alexa, this isn’t a game. Those were live rounds.”

Alexa shook her head firmly, pursing her lips.

“Screw that,” Neil said and crouched, aiming his gun. The nozzle of the Glock spat fire as Neil emptied the magazine.
 

A dog yelped, but another sped toward them, growling and barking. The animal was ten yards away before Neil could slam another magazine into his pistol and finish him off.
 

Alexa glanced back mournfully as Neil jumped up, grabbing her hand, and they scrambled along the fence toward the car. After a mile, Alexa heard the men stumble through the forest behind them. They had veered off and were heading north, trying to cut them off at the road.

She peered ahead through the foliage. The clearing was a hundred yards away. They were going to make it.

Neil saw Alexa stumble into the clearing, making her way along the fence to her left. Their Chevy was parked up ahead, and she scampered toward it, stumbling and then regaining her balance. He was twenty yards behind her, his breaths exploding from his chest in painful rasps. He was getting too old for this shit.

He sucked in a breath and then stopped as he saw Alexa backpedal, her hands held in the air in a defensive gesture. She held her hand out in front of her, her palm out, and then she turned her head and squeezed her eyes shut. A gun barked, and Alexa pirouetted as a slug slammed into her shoulder. She stumbled backward and landed on her bottom, her knuckles pushed into the ground behind her for support.
 

Her eyes flicked toward Neil, a terrified and pained expression on her face. “No, Neil, stay back.” She stood up and started backpedaling again. Her arm hung limply to her side, and blood spatters speckled her face and neck. She tripped and fell with her back into the fence on the edge of the canyon.
 

Neil ran toward her. She was standing up again, using the fence for support. “Watch out, Alexa!”

And then his entire world imploded. He felt a primordial scream rumble in his throat as another slug hit Alexa in her chest. She glanced down at her wound as she slammed into the fence, somersaulted, and fell backward off the face of the cliff.
 

The fence tumbled behind Alexa as she fell into the abyss, tearing from the ground, but it jammed tight at an anchoring pole, held up by a single, taught wire. Neil flew to the edge and looked down. She was hanging on by one hand, swinging to and fro, slamming into the sheer wall ten yards below.

Neil's heart hammered in his throat. Anderson Fitch stood leaning back against the hood of his car, chewing on a cigar. He held a Luger on his lap and smiled at Neil with amusement, his cheeks pushed up in a broad grin. Some of the guards now started joining him, but he held up the Luger, stopping them from intervening. He was enjoying the show.

Neil jammed his foot between the wire and the anchoring pole, making sure the boot was hooked in and secure. He hung over the cliff’s edge, grabbed the fence weave between straining fingers, and started hauling it up and dumping it to his side. He had to pull up Alexa's dead weight as well as the fence and the poles connected to it. Alexa’s body jerked as he pulled her closer. Nine yards, eight yards . . .
 

Tears streamed from Neil’s eyes. “Hold on, baby, nearly there,” he shouted, spittle flying from his lower lip. They had broken the first rule of entering an unsecured area: clear it first.

Neil looked down as he sucked in a lungful of air. Alexa's eyes were wide with shock, her injured arm hanging limply at her side, but she still held on with a white-knuckled grip.

Neil glanced over his shoulder as he hauled another yard of fencing to the top. “This is damn murder, Fitch,” Neil shouted as he strained against the fence. He fumbled in his pocket, trying to push the button on his GLD while trembling with the effort of keeping his grip on Alexa.

Fitch stood up from the hood of his old-fashioned, brown Lincoln and sauntered toward Neil. “We made a Gypsy pact, Allen.” He blew smoke through the corner of his mouth and shrugged. “You break the pact, she dies.”

Neil’s shoulders shook with effort. “Screw that, Fitch. Kill me, I broke the promise,” he shouted as he hauled Alexa up another yard. “Please, take me,” he sobbed. “Take me.”
 

Alexa held on with three fingers; she was losing her grip. “Use the other hand, Alexa,” Neil screamed in desperation, pulling her up another yard. “It’s going to hurt, but you don’t have a choice.”

Alexa nodded and swung her injured arm over her head, grabbing onto the fence, inching herself up.
Shit, she is tough.
 

Neil swallowed, his arms burning from the exertion. She was going to make it.

Alexa felt the fence shake as Neil’s arms trembled with the effort. He hauled her the final foot to the edge of the cliff. His face was red and contorted in a grimace, his brow shiny as beads of sweat dripped down his nose, an artery throbbing in his temple. He sucked in short breaths through gritted teeth.

Neil pursed his lips. “Give me your hand, Alexa,” he shouted unsteadily, gripping the fence between his fingers and lowering his free hand.
 

Alexa was hanging on to the fence by her index and middle fingers, trying to grab the fence with the hand of her injured arm. Her fingers started losing their grip, and her heart skipped a beat as she realized she was going to fall. She looked down and wondered if she would black out before hitting the rocks far below.

Screw that
. She let go with her injured hand and lifted it up toward Neil.
 

She wasn’t going to give up now. Their fingertips touched, and Alexa shrieked with the effort, the final ounce of energy leaving her hand as she gripped desperately on to the fence.
 

Then she lost her grip on the fence and fell.

Alexa jerked to a stop as her shirt ripped tightly around her throat. Neil had caught her by her collar and was hoisting her up. The metal fence plummeted down, slamming against the rock face as it careened past her. She could hear Neil grunt as he concentrated all his energy on lifting her up by her shirt.

She managed to grab his arm. She was unable to hold in a scream as the searing pain stabbed through her shoulder like red-hot daggers, but she was still alive.
 

Neil managed to grab her with both hands, one on her collar and the other on her belt, and with a loud grunt he heaved her over the side. Then he collapsed onto his stomach, sucking in loud, rasping breaths. Alexa lay next to him, breathing hard, clutching her shoulder.

“I dropped the fdamn GLD, Alexa,” he whispered between breaths.

“Where?”

“Down there, when I caught you.”

She swallowed. “It wouldn’t have helped, no one is close enough to help us,” she whispered back.

Andy Fitch sauntered closer, smiling down at them with taunting grey eyes. “As you wish, Mr. Allen,” he said and raised his Luger. He winked at Alexa.

A shot barked, and Neil’s body bounced up as the shot slammed into his back. Neil struggled into a crouch and then fell onto his back, blood streaming from his mouth and nose.
 

Alexa strained to get up but collapsed as her vision went blurry. The smell of sulfur drifted toward her nose, and she forced herself to sit up again.

Fitch fired again; the slug exploded into Neil’s shoulder. Another shot reverberated and ripped into Neil’s chest, followed by another three quick barks slamming into Neil’s stomach. He fell backward as his body spasmed, the blood seeping down his chin and onto his neck.
 

Alexa crawled forward, grabbing hold of his leg. “Neil,” she shrieked as he breathed out a gurgly breath; then his body spasmed once more and went still.
 

“Bastard,” Fitch said and spat on the ground next to Neil. He leaned down and yanked Neil’s Glock from his holster, examining the gun. “Nice.”

Anderson Fitch turned around and strode toward a classic Lincoln parked in the clearing. “Bring her,” he said to a tall guy wearing a Stetson, jerking his thumb toward Alexa. “And don’t screw up the accident.”

“No!” Alexa shouted in agony, clutching at Neil’s leg, her chest convulsing with painful sobs.

The man nodded and jogged toward her; then he brought a heavy boot down on her temple and her world went dark.

Alexa woke up with a groan. Her shoulder throbbed painfully. A high-pitched note hummed in her head. The sound of cartilage cracked in her ear whenever she moved her jaw. She blinked and slowly lifted her eyes.
 

Her hands had been tied above her head, and she was hanging suspended from a metal pipe hooked up to a sprinkler system.
 
The rope ate into the raw skin on her wrist as it supported her suspended body weight.

She shifted her weight to her legs. The relief was immediate as the blood flowed back into her hands, the downward pressure instantly reduced from her injured shoulder.
 

She waited for it.
 

She gasped, shuddering as a secondary wave of nauseating agony jolted through her body.
 

Relax. Breathe like you were taught.
She clenched her jaw and whimpered softly.

Alexa gritted her teeth and bit into her lower lip. She tasted the metallic warmth as the blood seeped into her mouth and concentrated on that single point of pain—enveloped it with her mind—and then put it to the side, in a tiny black compartment at the recesses of her subconscious, a special room reserved for exceptional situations like these. The mist in front of her eyes slowly cleared as a calming heat spread through her body.

She blinked and scanned her surroundings through the wisps of hair hanging in her face. She was back in the refinery’s basement where the ocelots were fed.
 

She heard movement behind her, and Anderson Fitch spoke. “Rise and shine, Capitano.” His voice sounded smoke-cured, husky, with an undertone of mockery that riled her intensely.
 

He ambled to the wall in front of her and casually leaned back against it, chewing on a cigar as he scrutinized her. He removed the cigar and smiled, flicking the ash carelessly to the ground. “You know why you’re here?”