Holes in the Ground Read Free Page B

Diego.”
    The free plane tickets.
Andy winced. He’d known it was too good to be true. After Samhain they couldn’t count on anything being a coincidence.
    “So you’re not some stoner kid who knocked on our doors accidentally,” Sun said. “You’re a con artist who lied to us.”
    Jerry yanked out the taser probes and yelped. “I
did
send you plane fare. That cost me almost all the money I had. Look, all I want is your story. On video, of course, for my ClipShare channel. I’m going to get some sick hits.”
    “We would be shot for treason for talking to you, you moron,” Andy said.
    “I’ll pixelate your faces. No one will know it’s you.”
    Andy rubbed his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. “Except for the Secret Service and the President of the United States.”
    Jerry turned sheepish. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
    Sun looked at the agents. “What happens to him?”
    Agent Williams shrugged. “He’s a foreigner. We could detain him without due process under the Homeland Security Act.”
    “Like in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib?” Jerry’s voice went up an octave. “And then what? I’m in jail forever without a trial?”
    “That, or you’re executed,” Agent Johnson said.
    “Or you accidentally die during enhanced interrogation.” Agent Williams shrugged. “It happens.”
    Jerry shook his head and clasped his hands together. “Please let me come with. I’m begging you. Please. I don’t want to be killed or imprisoned or subjected to torture.”
    “A
dvanced interrogation
,” Agent Williams corrected.
    Andy wanted to be angry this was happening, and angry at Jerry, though the boy wasn’t actually responsible. Instead, all he felt was fear, and pity.
    “Can’t you just erase his memory and dump him somewhere?” Andy asked.
    Agent Johnson said, “We don’t have that technology perfected.
Yet.
”
    “So our choice is to bring him, or he disappears?” Andy said.
    “Your choice,” Agent Williams said. “The President is allowing you to bring whomever you’d like.”
    “How generous of him,” Andy said, his frown deepening.
    Sun squatted down next to Jerry. “If you come with us, Jerry, you can’t put this on your website. No videos. No blogging. No telling anyone, ever. Do you understand that?”
    The kid just nodded.
    “And you’re not really stoned right now?”
    “I was acting. I poked myself in the eyes so they were bloodshot. I just want to know the truth, Mrs. Dennison-Jones. Finding it is all I have.”
    Sun gave her husband a look. Andy frowned.
    “Bring him along,” he said.
    A few minutes later they were hauling their bags and being corralled into the obligatory black helicopter idling on the hotel’s lawn. Several spectators, both hotel staff and guests, stood around gawping at the spectacle.
    The Government obviously doesn’t do
clandestine
anymore.
    Andy, Sun, and Jerry strapped themselves into their seats. Sun looked determined. Jerry looked excited. Andy felt like throwing up.
    The rotor blades started spinning. A feeling of weightlessness heralded the beginning of the flight and before long the chopper was a hundred feet above the ground, zipping away at eighty miles an hour. Andy watched the ground whiz by beneath them, and his gut told him this was a really, really bad idea.
    “Don’t worry,” Sun said over the roar of the chopper’s twin engines. “We never really were the relaxing type anyway. This is far more
us
.”
    “You think?”
    Sun leaned up against him and rubbed his thigh. “I’m still going to find some time to get you alone, my sexy man.”
    Andy felt himself brighten at the suggestion, but not enough to chase away all the worry. “Sun, I love you more than anything, but we know what happened last time.”
    “Nuclear explosion,” Jerry said, grinning.
    “This is a private conversation. But, yes, it ended in a nuclear explosion.” Andy looked into his wife’s deep brown eyes. “Do you really see this ending