High Crimes

“Come out with your hands up.”

He pressed a button on the box, said, “Got him.”

She looked out at the helicopter, heard the racket suddenly get louder. The helicopter seemed to be tipping, banking to one side. Then, just as suddenly, it flew off, taking with it the bright lights.

The shack returned to darkness, the noise diminished almost to silence.

“Got the pilot with the laser. Pilot couldn’t see, probably freaked out. Copilot probably took over. They’re not idiots; they’re not coming back. That leaves our friends out there, but they’re going to be a little freaked out themselves.

“Looks like they’re fifty yards away,” he said.

Now another voice came from out in front of the shack, also amplified, flat and mechanical sounding: “We’ve got you surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

“Stay down there, Claire.”

She turned her head to look up. He was standing in the shadows, peering out the open window.

“Now what?” she said.

“I’ll take care of it. Their standard operating procedure now is to negotiate. We let them talk.”

“You’ve got ten seconds,” said the voice, loud and slow and deliberate. “Come out peacefully and no one gets hurt. You have no choice. We have you surrounded. You have six seconds.”

“Jesus, Tom, what are we doing?”

“They’re not going to fire on us, babe.”

“Three seconds. Come out now or we commence firing.”

“Tom!”

“They’re bluffing.”

And suddenly there was a series of muffled shots, a phump-phump-phump. Terrified, Claire scrambled off the floor, crouched, peered out one of the open windows, and saw that several objects had been fired at them—

“Grenades,” Tom said quietly.

“Oh my God!” she screamed.

Each grenade, she saw, was emitting a thin cloud of white smoke.

“Gas,” Tom said. “Not explosives. Incapacitant gas. Shit.”

And suddenly Claire felt drowsy, uncontrollably, deeply tired, and then everything went black.

Part Two

14

Quantico Marine Base, Quantico, Virginia

The gate, made of steel bars painted institutional gray, slid open slowly, electronically. A marine guard stood at attention. The floors were pale-green linoleum atop concrete; the corridor echoed as she walked. The gate slid shut behind her, filling her with dread. A red sign on the wall said B-WING. The cinderblock walls in this section of the Quantico brig, Special Quarters One, were painted white. In this wing, violent rapists and murderers were incarcerated. Security cameras were everywhere. Her escort, the duty brig commander, led her to a door marked CELL BLOCK B and held it open. It was eight-thirty in the morning.

Another guard snapped to attention. She was taken to a windowed visitors’ room just off the cell block, shown to a blue chair at a wooden conference table. She sat and waited in the cold.

A few minutes later a rattling and clanking of chains announced his arrival.

Flanked by two large guards, Tom stood before her naked, except for gray military-issue undershorts. He was in handcuffs, leg irons, and a connecting waist chain. His head had been shaved. He was shivering.

Tears sprang to her eyes.

He said, “Thanks for coming.”

She began to weep.

She got to her feet. “What the hell is this?” she shouted at one of the guards, who looked at her impassively. “Where are his clothes?”

“Suicide watch, ma’am,” one of the guards said.

“I want clothes on him right now!”

“That request has to go through the duty commander, ma’am,” the other guard said.

“You go talk to him now. This man has rights,” Claire said.

They brought Tom back, dressed in a light-blue prison jumpsuit. He was still in restraints, which forced him to take small, mincing, jangling steps toward her. Still weeping, she embraced him. His hands still cuffed, he could not hug her back.

“I want the cuffs off,” she said.

“Only one hand can come out of the cuffs, ma’am,” a guard said. “Duty commander’s order.”

Tom sat at the conference table across from Claire. A guard stood watch just outside. A security camera was mounted in one corner of the room, where the wall met the ceiling. Guards watched them through one glass wall.

They sat for a moment in silence. He wore a tan ID badge with a tiny smudged black-and-white photo, his name — Ronald M. Kubik — his Social Security number, and the date of the confinement, which was today. A black strip on it said DETAINED. A red strip said MAX, for maximum-security confinement.

“This is all my fault,” Claire said.

“What is?”

“This.” She waved her hand around. “All this. You know — the car.”

“You’d never have found the transmitter. I blame myself. I shouldn’t have let you drive it anywhere near the lake.”

“They don’t fuck around,” Claire said.

He nodded.

“You’re in the army now,” she said.