Coastie stepped to the bedside and ran her palm along Kyle’s damp forehead, then kissed him on the cheek. “You all go ahead. I’ll just stay here with him for a while.” She took the sniper’s hand in hers and perched on the edge of the bed.
31
Swanson became aware in increments as his mind slowly adjusted to the lessening grip of the chemical sleep. Where nothingness had ruled for days, things now began creeping into his consciousness. Coastie, Lady Pat, Sir Jeff, and Double-Oh were clustered in a loose semicircle as Dr. Whyte brought him up through the final stages. An orderly monitored his vital signs.
A dreamlet was forming in the patient’s idle brain. He was underwater, coming up from a surfboard spill, held down by the force of churning water and the strong outward rush of a retreating wave. Swanson sat on the drifting sand as the ocean surged all around and through him, looking up like a seabed plant. That was interesting. There was light up there. He watched the bubbles rising from his nose and mouth being drawn automatically to the surface. He decided to follow them. It seemed nicer up there.
Breathing wasn’t a problem, even beneath the water; he thought this was very odd. He coughed several times. New air replaced the old, and his lungs filled with the fresh taste of life. Sounds filtered in, a cacophony of babel that he couldn’t understand. A powerful light stabbed into his eyes, so sharp that he jerked his head away from it.
“Waddah,” he moaned as his first word, and a cup was at his chapped lips, giving him a few sips of liquid gold. “Ahhh.”
“All good,” the orderly told the doctor.
Swanson heard, but didn’t understand. “Watter?” The cup visited again. His hearing improved and a cold wet cloth wiped gently at his eyes. He was in a room with other people.
“Kyle?” The man’s voice was an easy baritone. “Kyle, can you hear me? Shake your head if you understand me.”
“Hear.” He coughed. Sir Jeff and Double-Oh did a fist bump, while Lady Pat and Coastie hugged each other. Coastie took Kyle’s hand again. Dr. Whyte decided that tactile contact was a good thing, and that he could work around her.
“Very good.” Whyte continued. “You’re waking up from a very deep sleep. You’re safe and in good condition. There’s nothing wrong with you except for a lot of drugs that will work their way out of your system. Do not fight that.”
“Uh-hunh.”
“Good. We are aboard the Vagabond. Do you know what that is?”
“Boat.” Another cough. A bad dream crashed through his head, a deadly and roaring red demon, and he began to thrash, but his arms and feet were still secured to the bed. Coastie jumped away as if shocked by a bolt of electricity. Lady Pat grabbed her as if gentling a spooked pony.
“You’re okay, Kyle. That was a normal reaction. Relax.” The doctor pursed his lips and nodded to the orderly to let the morphine drip resume. “We’re going to let you rest a little while longer, until you adjust at a slower speed. There’s no hurry. No more nightmares.”
He faded again, but seemed comfortable, safe, and serene. “I love my Coastie,” he said to himself, bringing his mind to bear on life. But she heard it, and tears came.
Luke Gibson was in no hurry. Having cleared U.S. Customs through the ruse of shipboard persecution, he was now able to go where he wished, and America was a very big place. Time was his buddy. As long as he didn’t break the law or draw undue attention, he was good.
Using a Maine credit card provided in Susannah Lai’s packet of goodies — maybe he wouldn’t kill her after all — Gibson rented a well-used pickup truck for a week in his alias of Daniel Cabot McCabe. It had a bold round National Rifle Association sticker on the rear window. At a sporting-goods store, he outfitted himself with a camo cap and jacket and big aviator non-reflecting sunglasses. At Walmart he found underwear, jeans and four shirts, plus toiletries and other items — sneakers, work gloves, a small shovel, a flashlight, and a large backpack. Then he set out to see America on a leisurely cross-country drive aboard his 2010 Dodge Ram V8 with four-wheel drive. East, over to Interstate 5, then south to I-84 and east again into majestic landscapes dominated by national forests and by Mount Hood far to the left. A man in camo cap and shirt, his face shaded by large sunglasses and the tinted window of a pickup truck with a few dings and an NRA sticker was unlikely to draw a second glance from any cop or camera.
He somehow managed to stay awake for eight more hours and rolled safely into the mirror border towns of Clarkston, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho. The rush was on him now, sleep tugging but unimportant. Hot coffee and a few uppers were his fuel.
The smokestacks of the Potlatch and Clearwater Lumber factories regurgitated stinking clouds into the darkening sky as Gibson got his bearings in the Lewis and Clark Valley. He crossed the old drawbridge spanning the Snake River, got to East Main in Lewiston, and headed into the industrial sprawl — a rolling carpet of trash, junk, and scrap in a land with no zoning laws that might prevent a man from doing as he wished with his property
The tires crackled against the gravel of Shelter Road, and from the gloom he found the ruins of the old Sacred Heart Chapel. Its stones were slimy with moss and lichen, and it was isolated behind a rusty barbed-wire fence and a field of waste and thorns. Instead of being a place of worship, the chapel seemed to be trying to hide.
Dear old Dad, thought Gibson. The King had recognized value when he saw it, and dilapidated churches had been high on his list of hidey-holes. Local governments were reluctant to condemn them, and the religious community liked having them around. Sacred Heart had survived. Gibson shut down the truck and went in.
The senses were quick to react. The place stank of urine and feces, piled and rotting for decades. Obscene painted words had obliterated any sign of respect. The pews and the pulpit were gone, as was the roof, which had let the weather come inside. The place was a lot worse than when his father had discovered it. It was not just dilapidated, it was dead. He showed the light around, dancing it over the slag, and saw nothing. “Hey! Anybody here? Show yourself!” he hollered. Only silence came back.
Gibson held the shovel like a weapon as he moved toward the back of what had once been the nave. He walked directly to the west wall, then back five paces. One more flash around, and he started to dig. The covering of trash and debris was easy to clear, but he had to pry and pick hard to remove the joined rock of the floor.
He paused to catch his breath, then dug hard to finish. It was either still there or it wasn’t. The blade struck metal, and Gibson chipped around it, then used his fingers to extract an old metal ammunition box. Originally designed to hold several hundred rounds of .50-caliber ammo, the box had been retooled by King for his own purposes: beneath the pop-top metal lid lay a neat set of interior compartments sealed with wax. The contents were refreshed every ten years, so there was a new usable identification set, two credit cards, a thousand dollars in hundreds, fifties and, twenties, a dull silvered Ruger 9-mm. pistol and fifty clean rounds. He squatted on his boot heels and read the new ID: he was now Craig D. Abrams of Charlotte, North Carolina, a sales rep for an international computer-chip manufacturer. The only problem was that the King’s photo was on it, not that of the Prince. Gibson could alter that easily enough. He thanked his father and his grandfather, too, for having the foresight to install these little emergency caches everywhere they had put a CIA secret stash, which in this church was counted from the west wall. He pocketed the money, loaded the Ruger, and replaced the box, making a mental note to replenish it later.