The Overseer Read online

  The girl named Hannah approached. “Follow me,” she said sweetly, looking right at Olga. “I’ll show you the way.”

  Olga hesitated. Hannah’s hand reached toward her. “You’re free,” she said with a smile. Olga waited, trying to see if it was some kind of a trick or a cruel joke, wondering if freedom was really such a good thing.

  “You’re free,” Hannah said again.

  For a split second Olga let herself believe it might actually be true. She took Hannah’s hand, and the girl helped her to her feet.

  “Come on,” Hannah said, turning to the others, beckoning them to join her, moving toward the stairs.

  Olga followed, walking up the stairs behind Hannah, waiting for the moment when she would wake up. When she would know it had all been a dream. When Dominik would arrive and stop them and beat them…and worse.

  None of those moments came.

  Olga arrived at the top of the steps and turned toward the sanctuary. The place was a disaster.

  Somewhere behind her someone opened the church doors. Turning around she could see the others, moving out of the doors.

  Olga took a step forward. Then another. Could it be true? Was it really happening?

  As she stepped out into the sunlight, she saw the others standing around her, all looking up at the sky and out into the landscape.

  No walls. No bars. No chains.

  They were free.

  Misha sat in the passenger’s seat as they drove the truck along the hot Arizona highway. She hated the heat, and no matter how much she turned up the air conditioning, she couldn’t seem to cool off. She had lived in Eastern Europe for four decades before the fall of communism and the rise of the criminals that now ruled her old world. It was cold in those parts of the world, and she doubted she would ever get used to the heat here. Misha fanned herself and looked out the windshield at a road sign.

  They were less than ten minutes from the Mexican border. Then they’d sell these brats and she’d go home where it was cool. Just a little longer, she told herself.

  Where are you going?” one of the women asked as Hannah moved toward the car. They stood outside of the old wooden church, sun beating down.

  “I have to get the others,” she replied, opening the car door.

  “Are you coming back?” another asked.

  “Yes,” she said in earnest, “but I have to go.”

  Finding the keys in the ignition, Hannah started her car and turned it toward the road. Slowly she drove past the freed captives before she hit the gas.

  “This way!” Crest motioned, and Devin followed.

  They exited the plane at the Yuma airport, getting out on the landing strip. A set of Black Hawk helicopters was fifty yards away, rotors chugging.

  “These choppers are from the Yuma military base,” Crest shouted over the sounds of jet engines and helicopter blades. “The pilots and choppers are property of the United States Army. They are not allowed to cross the U.S. and Mexico border, and the military personnel are not allowed to engage in hostilities on domestic soil without a presidential order—which I wasn’t able to get at such short notice.”

  “Meaning?” John asked, coming alongside.

  “Meaning that they can get you where you need to go, but once you’re there it’s up to you. They can’t back you up. Which means you’re on your own if things go bad.”

  “Understood,” Devin said, keeping pace.

  “I had them put Kevlar vests and firearms on the choppers for you.” Crest stopped and turned to John. “Do you know where they are?”

  John nodded. “I think so.”

  Devin raised an eyebrow, not sure he liked the uncertainty.

  “OK,” Crest said with a nod, reaching out to shake their hands. “Good luck.”

  The car screamed down the desert highway.

  Hannah rubbed her eyes. There hadn’t been enough drugs in her system to knock her out, or even really disable her for long, but she could still feel the effects. Her judgment was impaired, and her depth perception wasn’t good. She didn’t care. If the police caught her, they could have her license for all she cared.

  But she wasn’t stopping now.

  She was already too far behind. Too far away. She had to catch up.

  She wasn’t going to lose these girls. Not now. Not after traveling across the entire continent to find them. Not after all the pain and anguish that came from it all. Not after all those people had died.

  Hannah saw a sign for the highway and the border crossing. That was the way they had gone. She could feel it. She knew it in the pit of her twisting stomach. This was the way to go.

  She pulled the car onto the highway and shifted gears, pressing down on the gas. They were driving a truck. A slow one. And they were hauling illegal cargo. Unlike Hannah they cared if they were pulled over and caught.

  She laid into the accelerator, watching the needle climb and the world outside blur. The engine howled violently. The world. The moment. The pursuit—fractured into a rapid fire of chaotic colors:

  Golden sun—crisscrossing the ground.

  Brown dust—hanging in the air.

  Black asphalt—blurring beneath her.

  Red needle—climbing up the speedometer.

  Like flying. Weightless. Every distant object flashing into immediacy.

  The vehicle moved faster and faster, breaking eighty miles per hour. Then ninety. The needle crossed the one hundred line.

  There was no stopping now.

  “Sorry about the delay,” Crest said into his cell phone, standing on the desert landing strip—one of his superiors from the OGA on the other end. “Bathurst has been with me since he signed the papers.”

  “Good,” his superior replied. “I’m glad you were able to convince him. He’ll be a valuable asset to the Firstborn program.”

  “Agreed,” Crest said with a smile.

  “Do you think he suspects that we were the ones who provided the white supremacy group with the weapons and intelligence for the assassination?”

  Crest looked around to see if anyone might be watching or listening. The landing strip in the Arizona sands was deserted. “Judging from his demeanor? I doubt it highly. But that’s the problem with working with these so-called Firstborn. We’ve always got the tiger by the tail when we do something like this.”

  “We’ll still need to take care of the senator if we want to protect our work.”

  “Agreed,” Crest said with a nod. “We’ll have to think of something. But we knew that was a possibility when Professor Mancuso told us about the likelihood of Firstborn involvement.”

  “Yes, he did. And I would say that gaining Bathurst as an asset is still far more valuable.”

  “True,” Crest concurred. “Which brings me to the next item of business.”

  “Yes?”

  “It turns out the stories were true. There is an organized Firstborn movement.”

  “That is interesting.”

  “It gets better,” Crest continued. “Their central office in Manhattan is being audited and investigated by the IRS and SEC. It’s exactly the kind of leverage we need.” Crest smiled to himself. “It’s Christmas for us.”

  High above the ground the drooping orange sun cast strange shadows across the desert wastes.

  “Do you see anything?” Devin asked over his headset.

  John looked down at the Arizona desert, watching it race by beneath them in its golden hour. The chopper blades pounded at the air. He shook his head. “No,” he replied into the headset, hearing his own voice in his ear.

  John focused, reaching out to the source of all his knowledge. “Come on, God,” he whispered into the headset.

  The copilot glanced over at John, confused.

  John closed his eyes, feeling the chopper carrying them along through the sky, flying at incredible speed. Muttering a prayer, he let himself go into the sensation of vertigo.

  His eyes opened, and he looked down. Miles away, on the highway, he saw a car
tearing across the pavement at top speed. “That’s her. That’s Hannah.”

  Misha sighed. They were maybe four miles from the border.

  “Huh,” the driver said to himself, looking in the rearview mirror. “Somebody’s in a hurry.”

  Misha frowned, leaning forward enough to see out the rearview mirror, and saw what he was talking about—a car, silver and midsized, was racing toward them, fast. Something clicked in her mind. She recognized the car.

  “That’s the car that the girl came in,” she said.

  “Is that Dominik? Maybe he needs something.”

  Misha squinted, trying to make out who the driver was. It wasn’t Dominik.

  The car moved so fast she thought it might shake apart.

  Hannah saw the truck come into view ahead of her, maintaining her breakneck speed, ripping past the barren countryside.

  Something flashed in the rearview mirror. Police lights. She’d been spotted. But it didn’t matter. Speeding tickets and prison didn’t matter. There was only the threat of losing the girls.

  The size of the truck grew exponentially in the front windshield as she began to catch up. There were only a few choices now. Her first instinct was to ram the truck and run them off the road—but who knew how the girls were situated. Maybe they were buckled in, but probably not. Running the truck off the road might hurt or even kill the girls. She wasn’t taking that risk.

  That didn’t leave much in the way of options.

  She was gaining fast, pulling up alongside the truck. Hannah looked up at the driver, and he made eye contact with her—he recognized her.

  The truck swerved, smashing into her from the side.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Misha shouted. “There’s a policeman back there! They’ll pull us over too!”

  “They won’t pull us over when she’s the one driving so fast,” the driver argued.

  “They may stop us at the border if they see strange damage,” Misha countered.

  The driver groaned as he watched the pursuing car fall back a short way. “Then what do we do?”

  “Just get to the border,” Misha ordered. “We’ll figure things out once we’ve crossed!”

  John watched as the chopper swooped, getting closer to the ground faster than he’d expected.

  “The silver car,” Devin said to the pilot, directing the man where to go, “and the truck it’s following. We need to get down there and stop them!”

  “We may not be able to do that,” the pilot said. “If we do anything to endanger citizens, law enforcement, or military property, we will be in violation of our orders.”

  “Just get close,” Devin ordered.

  John watched as Hannah’s silver car accelerated, trying to pass the truck, only to get hit from the side again. He gasped, holding his breath. If whoever was driving that truck wasn’t careful, they were going to crash, and the girls were inside there. He could feel it.

  The ground below ripped past, highway lines sleeting by.

  Hannah’s car backed off for a second, the police car behind her coming up fast. John could feel people start to panic. It was only a matter of moments before one of them—any of them— did something stupid and got somebody killed.

  “Pull over to the side of the road and…”

  Hannah ignored the policeman’s words as he blared them over his speakers. If he wanted to stop her, he would have to make sure they closed the border—but there was still the chance they would only stop her and the truck would get through. And she couldn’t risk that.

  Hannah accelerated again, pulling up close to the truck. It swerved again, blocking her from passing. Far in the distance two other police cars were joining the chase. Where had they come from? What were they doing patrolling a moonscape like this area? Her eyes dropped from the rearview mirror, and she saw the sign. The border was only a mile away. The police must have had something to do with border patrol. At this speed that was less than a minute to stop the truck.

  Fewer than sixty seconds.

  A helicopter buzzed overhead. She must have been causing more of a stir than she had realized.

  “Pull over to the side of the road, and stop your engine!” the police car ordered again.

  Less than half a mile.

  Hannah jammed her foot into the accelerator and pulled to the right of the truck. The vehicle swerved again, and she dropped off the side of the road, hitting the rocky dirt. Dust exploded up around her in a cloud.

  The truck hit the rumble strip and stopped its swerve—ill equipped to deal with the soft shoulder that would suck it off the road.

  Hannah lay into the gas, fighting to keep the car up to speed despite the drag of the dirt, the vehicle threatening to slide out of control. A gut-wrenching moment, and she was past the truck, blasting by. She adjusted the car and pulled back onto the road.

  The tires hit the pavement, and the car began to fishtail. Swinging dangerously into the oncoming traffic—a pickup truck’s horn blasting.

  It was like driving on ice. She’d done it before in the Colorado winters. The key was to not panic. To keep a still mind.

  Everything seemed to slow as the vehicle straightened out, racing forward. Somewhere in another world she hit the brakes, and the car peeled out—the back end swung to the left. Tires screamed against highway. Thick clouds of white leapt upward as the rubber of the tires flash-boiled on the pavement, laying black streaks and throwing up the stench of scorched petroleum. The car jerked perpendicular to the road, directly in front of the truck rushing toward her passenger side. They tried to slow, horn screaming, brakes locked, rubber shrieking.

  The passenger’s side exploded as the truck hit her.

  “No!” John shouted across the headset, words clipping and crackling. The truck plowed into Hannah’s car, twenty yards from the border crossing.

  “Bring us down,” Devin ordered, quieter than John, but equally intense, and the chopper began to lower.

  The only sound was the hissing of the burst radiator. The only smell was the nauseating combination of burnt rubber and the sweetness of leaking antifreeze.

  The only sensation was that of pain and disorientation.

  Misha recovered slowly. Her eyes lifted painfully, looking up at the smashed windshield. The girl had succeeded in stopping them. But they were close to the border—close enough to get across on foot.

  Flashing lights in the mirror caught Misha’s attention. The police would search the truck. They would find the girls, and they would all go to prison. She was struck with a second wind. The instinct to survive. Misha reached for the glove box and opened it fast, digging out the pistol. She didn’t know what it was called, but she knew how to use it, and she would if she had to.

  She shoved the passenger door open and climbed down onto the pavement, moving toward the back of the truck. The police car had stopped close, but the officer was too busy talking on his radio—probably getting some kind of backup. The other two cars were coming in fast behind the first, slowing to a stop behind it.

  Misha opened the back door to the truck; the others who were in the back with the girls looked up.

  “What happened?” one of them asked.

  Misha didn’t answer, grabbing at the first girl she saw— Kimberly. The heavily sedated girl stumbled as Misha pulled her from the truck. “Up,” she ordered, dragging the girl toward the front of the truck where the crash had been.

  Misha knew that if she was going to have to cross the Mexican border, she was going to need to bring something with her that would make some money. One of the girls would be enough. That would bring her enough money to make it back to the United States and continue business.

  A helicopter was touching down; nearby, men were getting out. Misha ignored it. She looked down from the helicopter and saw the crushed passenger side of the silver sedan, the girl named Hannah stumbling out.

  “Stop!” Hannah shouted.

  Misha didn’t stop. Border patrol guards came rushing from their s
tations toward the wreck, ignoring Misha and the girl. Only a little further and she would cross out of United States jurisdiction.

  “Stop!” Hannah shouted again, stepping in front of Misha.

  “Out of my way,” Misha ordered.

  “Stop her!” Hannah shouted, pointing, trying to block the way. Misha panicked, seeing all the faces suddenly turning toward her—and she lifted the handgun and pointed it at Hannah.

  “Put it down!” someone shouted from behind.

  Misha turned fast and looked.

  Two men—one black, one white—wearing bulletproof vests and holding guns.

  She shot at them, and they opened fire.

  The barrel of a handgun flashed at the level of her eyes just before her sight was smashed into darkness.

  Epilogue

  THE YUMA AIRPORT was all but empty. Hannah stood in the concourse with Kimberly, waiting quietly. She had rescued Kimberly and the other girls the day before. And today, as the sun was setting, she was sending the last of the girls on her way.

  “You still haven’t told me how you found me,” Kimberly said, looking up at Hannah.

  “Well,” Hannah said, “would you believe me if I told you that God called me to find you?”

  Kimberly watched Hannah for several seconds. “I guess that’s the only thing that makes sense.” She was quiet for a moment. “Like the one sheep out of a hundred.”

  “That’s right,” Hannah agreed. “The shepherd left the ninetynine to find the one.” Hannah turned back toward the windows showing the runway, a jet slowing to a stop and taxiing toward them. “That must be it,” Hannah said, looking down at Kimberly. “Are you ready?”

  The girl looked hesitant. “I’m sort of scared. Does that make sense?”

  Hannah watched the people exit the plane, walking toward the airport doors. She spotted the person she was looking for. “Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I can see how you would be scared. But I don’t think you have to be.”