Free Red Knight Falling by Craig Schaefer Page B

pressed a credit card into my hand. Her Oceanic Polymer platinum AmEx.
    “I’m going to read you a credit-card number,” I told Cody. “Fly to Roberts Field in Oregon. Rent a car when you land, and I’ll give you directions to meet up with us.”
    Once I hung up, Jessie whistled.
    “That’s not just breaking the regs, that’s shredding ’em.” Jessie looked over at April. “I think I’ve created a monster. And I kinda like it.”
    “You heard Linder,” I said. “We’ll do whatever we have to. And right now, what we have to do is go mobile. We’re sitting ducks in here.”
    “Seconded,” April said, leading the way to the door.
    The four of us took the elevator down. We weren’t expecting a full house in the lobby, almost every guest in the hotel milling around in confusion. And we definitely weren’t expecting the army to show up.
    And yet, there they were.

TEN
    The man standing atop the check-in desk was in his early fifties, with a chiseled physique and a receding wave of steel-gray hair. Dressed in crisp camo fatigues, he raised a hand to draw the room’s attention. Four other soldiers, assault rifles slung over their shoulders, stood like a wall of muscle between him and the crowd.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, his voice carrying across the room like a veteran stage actor’s, “there is no need for alarm. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Meade of the United States Army, Forty-Second Infantry Division.”
    “You getting this?” Jessie whispered. I was already slipping on my glasses, snapping candid pictures of Meade and his men.
    “We are responding to a homeland-security incident, farther inside the forest boundaries. The situation is classified. What I can tell you is that none of you have been exposed to any radioactive or otherwise harmful contaminants as yet.”
    That got the crowd murmuring, a flood of nervous glances and clutched cell phones.
    “For your safety, however,” he said, “we must evacuate the area. We’re asking all of you to immediately leave Deschutes National Forest, and not attempt to return until we give the all clear. We strongly suggest you travel southeast on US-20. All westbound traffic on US-20 will be blocked off until further notice.”
    If you wanted to cordon off a chunk of the wilderness so that you could—for instance—comb the woods for fallen satellite debris without being disturbed—you could hardly pick a better cover story. All he had to do was drop the magic words— homeland security and radioactive —and the lodge’s guests were more than ready to check out and drive south as fast as their wheels could take them.
    Clever tactic. I’d have to borrow that sometime. Of course, I’d need an army unit to go along with it. A glance to the lobby’s front windows—and the small convoy of camo Humvees lined up outside—told me Lieutenant Colonel Meade wasn’t messing around. We followed the stream of tourists to the parking lot, blending in with the crowd, silent until we got back in the car.
    “So that just happened,” Jessie said, slipping into the passenger seat beside me and reaching for the seat belt.
    “It could be a legitimate response,” April said. “We know data on the Red Knight was deliberately leaked to the deep web. We also know from our briefing that at least one aboveboard government agency is aware of the Knight’s existence. The military might have been dispatched out of concern that the satellite really is emitting some kind of toxic radiation.”
    I connected the camera glasses to my phone with a Bluetooth link, shooting off my newest batch of photos to the Bureau. “If he is who he says he is, we’ll know soon enough.”
    As I started up the car and eased out of the parking spot, joining an endless crawl toward the interstate, Jessie left a voice mail for Linder and updated him on the latest developments.
    “—and we’d really like to not get in a gunfight with the army,” she finished, “so please call