Ben opened his mouth to defend himself. Instead, he cursed loudly.
Because a highway patrol car had just spotted them.
Chapter Fourteen
Sam pulled back on the collective, sending the JetRanger into a steep climb. At a hundred feet, he jammed his right foot on the antitorque pedal, dipped the collective, and swung round in a wide arc, finishing in an easterly direction.
“Where are you going?” Ben asked.
“That highway patrol officer is going to report our location. We need to be somewhere else before they can scramble any fighter jets to greet us.”
Ten minutes later, Sam zigzagged into a southwestern direction again, keeping the helicopter down low.
Ben glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, it looks like you lost him!”
“Of course we lost him!” Sam replied. “He’s in a car and we’re in a helicopter. The trouble’s going to be keeping hidden from the fighter squadron that I have no doubt is currently being scrambled to find us.”
Ben swallowed. “What’s your plan?”
“I don’t have a plan. This is your show remember?”
“I thought you said you believed me. I’m innocent!”
“I never said I thought you were innocent, but I had a fair idea why they’re after you despite you having never done a thing wrong in your life.”
“Hey, that is innocent!” Ben protested.
“No, it isn’t. You may be going to do something in the future. Who knows? The Defense Department doesn’t generally arrest people before they decide to commit a terrorist act.”
“That’s not me. Never has been. Never will be.”
Sam shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I do!”
“All right, tell me about yourself.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “Now?”
“We’ve got time.”
“I thought fighter jets were on their way?”
“They are,” Sam admitted. “But what are you going to do? Get out and push? It’s not like we can make the JetRanger go any faster than it’s already traveling.”
“All right,” Ben drawled, “I’m a half-human scion of some kind of alien race or something…”
“They’re not an alien race, just ancient,” Sam corrected. “And I meant what really happened to you? What’s the deal about Bolshoi Zayatsky?”
“I have no idea. I’d never even heard of the place before today. I have no idea where it is even.”
Sam blinked and said, “Russia.”
“That’s right!” Ben yelled, as though he’d just remembered. “He said it was in Russia!”
“Who did?”
“Special Agent Ryan Devereaux.”
“Who’s he?”
“I have no idea. The man who interrogated me. He said my parents were from a terrorist organization in Russia. That’s all I know.”
Sam turned and met his eye. “Were they?”
“Beats me,” Ben announced. “I mean, I don’t think so. They both died in a horrible car accident when I was three.”
“What did they do before they died?”
“They traveled a lot.”
“Really?” Sam raised his eyebrow. “To Russia?”
“No. Never. Only ever in the USA. They were substitute teachers,” Ben said, as though that justified things.
“Okay, what do you know?”
“I’m the son of two perfectly normal people, John and Jenny Gellie. I don’t know how far back my family goes in America; I’ve never really cared. But I know that all four of my grandparents lived here, in the States, until their deaths. My family didn’t sneak over here or anything like that.”
“And your parents?”
“Like I said, my parents died when I was three years old, which was after the death of most of my grandparents. Grandma Gellie was still alive, but she wasn’t in the best of health — there was no way she could have coped with a three-year-old boy on her own. So I was fostered by my parents’ best friends, the Fulchers. I don’t remember much about my own parents. I remember my father reading me bedtime stories with him balanced on the edge of my bed. I remember my mother chasing me through the house for hide and seek. I remember what they actually looked like better from photographs than from their real faces in my memory, but what do you expect? I was three.”
Sam remained silent but gave a curt nod, like he was listening.
Ben took it as encouragement and continued. “The Fulchers made pretty good replacement parents, even though they’d never intended to be parents in the first place. They loved me and supported me, and gave me good advice. If it wasn’t for them, I probably never would have made it past my anger at my parents’ death. It hung around for a long time. I’d lost everything I’d ever known, and the only people I had to blame were them. I’m sure I broke their hearts about a million times, until I grew up enough to understand how much I was hurting them.”
“And you said you now work at the State Department?”
“That’s right,” Ben nodded. “I’m ajunior law graduate.”
“Good for you.” Sam smiled kindly. “I mean, for someone in your position, a background in law has gotta help, right?”
“You’d think so. But according to Special Agent Devereaux, all those rights go out the window when you’re suspected of terrorism. Obviously those rights disappear when you donate blood too.”
“What happened at the hospital?”
“I went to the hospital in order to donate blood because my friend was in a motorcycle accident, and the hospital’s blood supplies were getting low. I volunteered to show up and donate. I’ve never donated before, but it was more because I didn’t get my ass in gear than for any real reason. I’ve always meant to, I just never got around to it — until today.”
Sam made a wry smile. “Guess you’re not going to become a regular?”
“No. Never again. I mean, I wanted to help, but not if this is the outcome.”
“So tell me what happened when they took your blood?”
“I didn’t know what the actual procedure for donating blood was supposed to be. They started taking multiple samples for tests. You’d think they’d be able to just take the blood donation and test it for whatever they needed to test it for…after the donor had left the building. Now that I’ve had two minutes to think about it, it seems especially odd, what they did. Tests. More tests. Still more tests!”
“How many blood samples did they need?”
“At least seven before I eventually got fed up and tried to leave. But they stopped me. They tried to talk me out of it, they tried to get in my way, and finally they injected me with something that knocked me unconscious.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, questioningly. “After that, you woke up in the interrogation room of the Pentagon?”
“That’s right. I woke up tied to a chair with tuff-ties, which I can’t imagine would be considered even remotely professional unless you were at a riot or something, I don’t know, where a bunch of prisoners had to be restrained for a relatively short period of time. Then Devereaux appeared and started questioning me. Just one of them at first. Asking me all kinds of intrusive questions. Why are my eyes violet? Have I ever been sick? What was my real age? Who were my parents, really?”
“Yeah, I’m seeing it.”
“I feel like they got the wrong guy, like I have a look-alike who’s sitting in a waiting room somewhere, waiting to get interrogated, and getting bored because everyone has forgotten all about him.”
“Maybe this is all a mix up,” Sam said. They looked pretty serious though… maybe something about your parents makes you special? Maybe you’re genetically different than everyone else?”
“I don’t want to be special. I don’t want to have a secret background. You know what? I have a pretty good life. I don’t have a secret fantasy about being someone else, some kind of weird-ass chosen one or something like that,” Ben said, defiantly. “My parents are my parents. My life is my life. I’m not some kind of sleeper terrorist, like that agent was trying to imply. I don’t want to wake up one morning and be Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall. I’m happy the way I am, and I don’t need this crap.”