The doctor wasn’t one I’d seen before, this one was a woman. Pretty with gray tinted dark hair, brown eyes, and fantastic bone structure as if she was a Greek statue brought to life. She came into the cell followed by Delaney who carried a tray with two Styrofoam containers, coffee and a bottle of Pepsi. I confess I had eyes only for the food but good manners dictated that I at least stood up to acknowledge her presence.
“Doctor.” I held out my hand and she shook it once, told me to get undressed as I looked longingly at the food. I was a little hesitant about undressing in front of her but her impatient huff made me hurry. All I did was unzip the front of the paper coveralls and let the top hang from my waist. She eyeballed my bandages and removed them only after she pulled on a pair of purple examination gloves.
“What happened?” She sucked in her breath. “Heart or---?”
“I was crushed by lumber falling off a log truck.”
“A glancing blow?” She picked up a med tray that had come in after Delaney and my lunch.
“No. Four of them rolled over me. 24-28 inches round and fifteen feet long.”
She stopped. “You’d be dead if that was true. Ruptured everything in your abdomen.”
I recited my injuries and she didn’t believe me. “When? When did this happen? How long ago were your surgeries?”
I counted. Surprised, I answered, “five days ago. Seems longer.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. Delaney stepped forward and held a tablet up to her eyes. He had access to my medical records. It didn’t make for light reading. It didn’t make her believe me, either.
“I don’t believe it,” she muttered as she began the process of removing the embedded staples. It hurt but it was a minor pain compared to how they got there. She wiped me off with anti-bacterial scrub and then gave me a complete physical. Her hands were quick, efficient and gentle. She didn’t poke me hard anywhere in the sore spots.
“Pulse, respirations, BP and temp are all optimal,” she announced. “I’d like to get a sample of your blood.”
Here, Delaney stepped in and demurred. “Sorry, that’s not possible. All we need is to know whether Lakan is healthy enough for a four-hour plane trip.”
“I see no reason why he can’t,” the woman doctor returned slowly. “He’s remarkably healthy for someone who had major surgery only five days ago. Well healed.”
I interjected. “I wouldn’t wait too long to move me nor broadcast how you are going to do it. I guarantee within minutes of an official request for transport, Chase, and the NSA will know. I’m surprised that he isn’t already on his way here.”
“You’re that important to the National Security Agency?” she asked.
I looked at her in astonishment. “Where have you been, doc? In a hole in outer Mongolia since the 90’s? I’m like the most wanted person in the history of the world. More so than Bin Laden and Santa Claus. I’m a package literally worth billions.”
She didn’t answer me. Delaney stepped in and told me to get dressed, we would be leaving in fifteen minutes. “Helicopter off the roof?”
“No. Couldn’t arrange one fast enough w/o using official channels or the FBI chopper which is all computer regulated. We’re taking you out by car.” He waited until we were the only two in the cell. “Taking you out in Assistant Director Anson’s personal vehicle with me and one other guard. We thought the fewer people who know where you’re going and with whom, the safer you’ll be.”
“Don’t trust your fellow agents?” I went through the bundle of clothes that he’d carried in and raised an eyebrow. The clothes were a suit in dark gray, almost my size with a blue dress shirt, black socks and fancy dress shoes. They looked like the typical FBI clone uniform but more expensive than off-the-rack.
“Anson’s?” I asked and shook my head. “Nope. He’s more the blue pin-stripe type. He’s larger than this suit size.”
“It was his son’s,” Delaney said drily. “He died in the war.”
“Iraq or Afghanistan?”
“You’re the genius, figure it out.”
I didn’t say anything but stripped down to my underwear and settled into the suit. It smelled as if it had hung inside a plastic wrapper in someone’s cedar closet. His son must have outgrown it before he went off to fight; his father was both taller and heavier than me and I assumed from the older style of the lapels and cut that the suit was several years out of fashion.
Delaney didn’t say anything when I asked him how I looked but I had my answer when Anson returned. He drew in his breath with almost a sob and visibly staggered. Delaney touched his shoulder and murmured to him. I heard it but pretended I hadn’t.
The two of them hustled me out of the basement, up through the cells and interrogation rooms to a floor that I assumed was the maintenance area as it was full of pipes, electrical boxes the size of small cars and a huge furnace whose vents reminded me of the scenes in Die Hard with Bruce Willis. I was sure happy I didn’t have to climb through them with a crazy German sadist/thief/terrorist on my tail. Delaney caught me looking and grinned as I interpreted the look on his face conveying the very same mental image that was in my head.
We came out next door in the basement of another building that smelled like a Chinese restaurant and as we climbed a short set of cement steps, I saw that it was a Chinese restaurant, the Golden Dragon. It shared an alley between it and the federal building with a small parking lot that held three cars. Two were beat-up delivery vans and the third was a dark blue Chrysler 300 with regular plates, not government ones. The other item made my eyes widen in glee. Parked next to the 300 was a BMW with Florida plates but it was my bike.
Anson clicked his key fob, turned on the engine, opened the trunk and the doors unlocked. He hurried over, pulled out my leather pants, jacket and threw them not at me but Delaney.
“Get dressed, Cam,” he said and the agent stripped down to his boxers. The pants were tight on him; I was two inches thinner but we were the same height at six foot. Where I was thin and wiry, he was muscled and fit. The jacket barely zipped; he was a 44 long and I was a 36 but I’d gotten it a few sizes larger so I could layer under it. He slipped on the helmet and I heard his exclamation as the HUD graphics stunned him.
“You can communicate with each other and eavesdrop on the police bands?”
“Police, fire, emergency and military channels,” I admitted. I couldn’t remember if I’d encrypted the channels after last talking to Mairy and Robin. I no longer had access to the quipp to do so.
“Annie’s cabin, Camden,” Anson said as Delaney sat the bike and turned the key. Nothing happened until I keyed in the start sequence on the digital pad turning over the system to his control. It started with a sweet roar of the pipes and he left the alley first.
“Get in,” the Director said. I peered in the trunk and saw my stuff, the backpack, bow and quiver of arrows. I grabbed them, threw all in the back seat where I was ordered to sit and buckle up.
Once he was in the driver’s seat, a man came out of the Chinese place and took up the passenger side. Anson’s key fob had already started the Chrysler and he backed smoothly out of the alley onto the main street executing a perfect three-point turn. It was late and there was hardly any traffic which led me to believe that I had been inside the building for less than four hours. Which considering the slow speed at which the government worked was a major accomplishment compared to say---enacting a bill.
I watched behind us as he drove the speed limit down the main avenue. We passed the Chinese place and turned the corner away from downtown following the signs for the Interstate but he took the secondary routes instead. I didn’t see anyone following us and only caught one glimpse of the BMW in front.
“What’s Annie’s cabin?” I asked not remember seeing it on any of my maps.
“A place where we can hook up with a way to get you to Washington safely and swiftly,” Anson returned watching his rear view. The agent in front was not someone I’d seen before or recognized. He wore jeans with a jacket over a blue denim shirt and cowboy boots.
“Who are you?” I scanned my memory for the agents I’d seen in the files of the Kalispell FBI database and didn’t recognize him. I gripped the seat in sudden fear.
“Relax, Lakan. His name is Maven Styles, a US Marshal that I’ve known since I was 12.”
“Twelve? He looks like a Texas refuge and he’s from Boston?”
“Boston? He’s not from Boston,” Anson laughed. “I am. I grew up in Uxbridge. No, Maven was born in North Dakota. I met him when I went to summer camp and we stayed friends, went to Basic Training together and fought in Iraq as MPs. He’s also my brother-in-law. I trust him with my life.”
“He’s not in your files.”
“You hacked my files?” Anson stared at me long enough that he veered out of his lane into the median. Luckily, nothing was coming and he corrected his drift.
“Yeah. So what? Just one more thing that makes me uber-valuable.”
He hadn’t told me what Annie’s cabin was nor where. I spent the next few hours alternating between watching behind us and worrying about what we were driving towards.