Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,111
the cries of children on the ground!”
The MPs started for him, and he freed the vape pen from his pocket and sprinted away. The air felt heavy, the heat drafted up from the lab floor venting along the elevated corridor.
Down below, the commotion went unnoticed, but people in the corridor froze all around him. A number of passing airmen keyed to him, going on point.
Evan feinted left, sprinting around an MP, and hurdled another coming in for a tackle. Suddenly a dozen people were in play, a wall of blue berets and camouflage, the noose closing fast.
He curled his hand around the vape pen, vectoring hard for the outer wall, aiming at one of the heating vents. Someone struck him from the side, and he rolled away like a running back evading a tackle. His momentum spun him 180 degrees, his forearm slamming into the concrete. His other hand, clenching the vape pen, swung around to absorb the impact, and he opened his fist just before it hit the vent. His palm slapped the metal rectangle, the slats digging into his skin. The vape pen rolled between his flesh and the metal, horizontally positioned but not popping through.
Someone rammed into his back, dragging him toward the floor.
He fought back, holding himself against the wall, his hand sliding down along the vent. The vape pen clanked unseen across each slat, and finally Evan felt the pressure in his palm release, the pen squeaking through. He heard it tick against the inside of the ducting as it plummeted downward, and then he was on the floor, buried beneath the dogpile.
* * *
Evan had to dip his head to press the ice pack to his swollen cheek. His knee felt bruised, and the index finger of his left hand had been torn at the nail in the one-sided rumble. Raw skin ringed his wrists where he’d been steered hard by the handcuffs. His fingerprint adhesives were still smudged with ink from when they’d printed him, and dried blood from a nosebleed had crusted on his upper lip.
He’d been brought into a concrete box of a room in the neighboring building and deposited into a chair bolted to the floor, his cuffs locked to a metal ring on the table before him. His reflection gazed back woefully from the one-way mirror.
His activist high jinks had earned him two hours locked in this position. His arm muscles were cramping, his hamstrings tight from sitting on the hard chair for this long. He watched a fly crawl across the ceiling. He wondered if it was real.
At last he heard footsteps.
The door was flung open with seeming great annoyance, and then a major general entered and steadied an iron gaze on Evan. He had pale blue eyes that looked hard, chips of gemstone. Yellow-red mustache, blond-white hair in a dated center part, two-star insignia riding the shoulder of his pressed uniform. His rank showed that these people treated any intrusion as a national security threat.
At first assessment he seemed to be stalwart, one of those men whom the military had disassembled in basic and rebuilt from the boots up. He filled those boots now with a forward-tilting confidence that seemed righteous—or at least approximated righteousness with conviction.
Evan wondered if anyone at Creech North had an inkling of Molleken’s extracurricular activities, that the good doctor was putting his considerable resources toward cleaning up those who might interfere with the massive government contract that the DoD was on the brink of awarding him.
“Every last thing on this base falls under my purview. My attention is valuable, Mr.…” A glance down at a printed report in his hand. “Paul Norris.”
“I know what you’re doing here,” Evan said. “I know you’re building drones that violate international law. I have a hundred and eighteen Freedom of Information Act requests in with the CIA, and as soon as I get those results”—he faked a tic that jerked his head to one side, a mannerism he’d picked up from Danny when he’d visited him in prison—“I’m gonna whistle-blow on your whole operation.”
The words seemed to wash over the major general without moving him in the least, tide over a boulder. He kept on his own track. “How’d you acquire a Creech North parking credential?”
“Our 4chan group keeps track of drone pilots. We know when someone goes down, gets arrested…” Evan paused coyly. “When their truck winds up in an impound lot. We won’t stop until the killings do.”