She stood in the line, behind another officer who was being served. The officer took a file that was handed to him and moved out of the way. Ellie was in front of the archivist.
She handed Helen’s ID over. “I need the Ferryman files.”
The receptionist typed the word into his computer, swiped the ID into the system, looked at the photo, and looked at Ellie.
He stared at her for five seconds. “You want both of them?”
“What?”
“Both files.”
Ellie smiled. “Yes, please.”
“Okay.” The archivist handed the ID back to her. “Come with me. System says you can’t take them away — got to be read in one of the booths.”
Ellie followed him to a series of tiny cubicles, each containing a desk and one chair. “Wait here.”
Ellie sat at the desk.
Was the archivist going to return with two burly security guards?
One minute later, he dropped the files on the desk. “They can’t leave the booth. You press that button when you’re finished and I’ll come and get them. Make sure the door’s shut.”
After he was gone and the closed room secure, Ellie placed her hands on the files and momentarily didn’t want to open them. Whatever Ferryman was, the Agency had decided it was important enough to sacrifice Ellie in order to keep Antaeus alive, and to crucify Will Cochrane because he’d broken Ferryman protocols. Inside the files, she’d find whatever secret was more important than her life. She couldn’t help but wonder whether learning about Ferryman was pointless, considering Will stood no chance of reaching the States.
But she was a spy, and all spies lust after the truth with the mental and physical yearning of a crack addict searching for another fix.
No matter what the dangers.
She opened the files.
The New Hampshire truck idled in the stationary traffic at the newly built large customs complex on the American side of the International Avenue crossing. The buildings resembled a small airport complex, and to the left of them were six lanes that led to six passport controls, three of which trucks were permitted to use, plus six bays where cargo could be unloaded, examined, and reloaded.
The bays were at capacity and every vehicle going through the complex was being checked.
The driver glanced at his watch, desperate to get moving onto Maine State Route 9 so that he could reach New Hampshire with time to spare for some food and rest before his next pickup.
A tap on the window. A Maine state cop stood there, making no effort to hide the fact that he was holding a pistol in one hand.
Clearly, something really serious was going down.
The driver opened his window.
“You got cargo in the trailer?”
The trucker shook his head. “I dropped off at Truro. Heading back to Concord. What’s going on?”
The cop ignored the question and gestured to a bay containing three more police officers, one of them holding a mirror on the end of a pole, all of them carrying pump-action shotguns. “Put her in there, ignition off. We’ll need to check inside.”
The driver did as he was told. The cop walked alongside the vehicle and once again stood by the window when it was stationary.
The trucker said, “I’ll open the trailer for you.”
“No you won’t. You’ll stay here while we get things unlocked. Give me the trailer keys.”
The driver handed them to him.
“You pick anyone up en route?”
“No.”
“See anything suspicious? Maybe a man on foot in a place where people don’t generally take a walk?”
“Nope.”
“All right. Don’t do it yet, but when I tell you to I want you to immediately turn on the interior trailer lights. Immediately, understand?”
“Sure.”
The police officer looked at his colleagues. “This one’s from Truro. We give it the VIP treatment. All of you, with me.”
They moved to the rear of the trailer. Three of them stood back so that they could not be seen by anyone inside. The cop holding the pistol and keys unlocked the container, yanked the doors open, and immediately stepped back while shouting, “Lights on, now! Police. If there’s anyone in there, call out your name.”
Silence.
The cop holding the mirror on a pole moved it to the entrance and adjusted angles so that he could see everything inside. He shook his head.
His commander held three fingers up, then two, then one. All four men swung their weapons so that they were pointing at the interior of the trailer.
It was brightly illuminated.
And completely empty.
“Okay. Let’s check underneath and in the cab.”
Forty feet away from the cops, at the front of the trailer, Will released his grip on the undercarriage, dropped to the road, pulled out his handgun, and rolled away from the vehicle until he was on his back. He fired six rounds, all of them aimed with precision so that they struck the truck inches from the police but had no chance of ricocheting and injuring them. The police ducked low, dashed for cover, and started shouting. Will fired two more rounds, jumped to his feet, ran to the head of the truck, and swerved left just before a shotgun boomed and sent pellets into the side of the cab. While changing his magazine clip, he dodged between stationary trucks and other vehicles in the six lanes leading to the passport control booths. Behind him, the police were screaming at passengers to stay in their vehicles and get down.
Will spun around and got to one knee between two trucks, fired at the road to the right of the four encroaching cops, sent three more rounds over their heads, dived under one of the trucks as they returned fire with shotguns and pistols, and leopard-crawled to the other side.
As he emerged, something hit him on the back with tremendous force, causing him to wince in agony. A man was on top of him, wrapping a muscular arm around his throat and squeezing. Will lashed his skull backward into the man’s face, making him loosen his grip and allowing Will to twist and smash a hand into his face with sufficient force to crush his nose. The man fell away, writhing on the ground crying. He was a big trucker who’d leapt out of his cabin onto Will the moment Will had crawled from underneath his trailer. Now, he probably wished he’d listened to the cops’ orders.
Two police officers peered from behind the truck and fired their shotguns just as Will rolled away, got to his feet, and jumped onto the roof of an adjacent car. Most of the pellets missed him, but some tore through his jacket and raced alongside the skin of one arm, sending needlelike pain down the limb.
Will ran onto the roof of the next vehicle, leapt forward to another car, jumped down as more shots were fired, and sprinted as fast as he could to the passport booth while wondering if the man in there was armed. He took no chances and fired two warning shots through the glass, close to his head.
“Stop!”
Will dived onto a car as one cop fired again, his body causing the metal beneath him to buckle.
Whoever these cops were, they were tenacious professionals.
Ones that couldn’t be deterred by warning shots.
He regretted that as he fired a bullet into the officer’s shoulder and watched him twist and drop his shotgun.
He ran alongside the booth, past vehicles containing men, women, and children who were embracing each other and looking at him with mouths open and eyes wide in disbelief and disgust.
They thought he was a criminal.
But not a common one.
Instead, a rabid creature who’d shot a cop and therefore could savage them if they gave him reason to.
The officer in the booth was squatting with his hands on his head while staring at him. He looked middle-aged, overweight, and terrified.