Chapter 8 - Stick To The Plan

They positioned the bodies on the bed in the motel. Jane felt a little badly about the potential years of therapy they were adding to someone’s life, as most people didn’t react well to stumbling across two corpses, but oh well. The ledger of things she’d done wrong was growing, but she didn’t feel like burning down the motel, and it was possible she and Cooper had grown a little too fond of setting fire to their problems.

The bodies also gave them an advantage. If Richards was right, these… things had the same DNA and fingerprints as they did. Which meant they’d be found dead. The “real” them. Not fake dead, not missing dead, but actually dead. It was the best cover they’d ever have, and they weren’t going to blow it.

They were both convinced that there’d be another attack. Cooper pointed out that they’d been getting worse. One attacker the first time, two the second. While he acknowledged two data points didn’t make a pattern, he guessed the next assault would be worse. Jane agreed, and they moved forward assuming the worst. It never hurt to over plan, and if there was one thing they were good at, it was overplanning.

The cottage was a property they’d bought some years back during a particularly unpleasant period when they were certain the President of Bolivia was trying to have them murdered. As it turned out, it was just a slight misunderstanding over a mission that required them to abduct his head of state. They were left with a very high-tech, very fortified cabin in the middle of nowhere, Ontario.

The best part? The underground escape tunnel.

Was spending two-hundred and eighty thousand dollars on a four-hundred-foot-long underground escape tunnel excessive? Sure. Possibly. Jane’s therapist would have said: “Yes, absolutely,” and then made a note to circle back in future sessions. But the great thing about it was the triple-reinforced concrete walls.

Concrete walls that made it pretty hard to read transmission signals.

Cooper was sure they’d had trackers planted on them, even if he couldn’t figure out how. They had the car scanned more often than they put in gas. There weren’t any marks on their bodies that would indicate surgical placement and boy, did they look. Often and thoroughly, with vigorous enthusiasm.

Two weeks ago, Jane would have shrugged and assumed if they couldn’t find evidence of a tracking device, there must not be one. But in a week where identical copies of herself kept showing up to kill her? Yeah, she’d say a tracking device was possible.

The drive took about six hours, and they only stopped for gas and brief breaks. Most of the planning was done via clumsy sign language, which limited how specific they could get. One of the core elements caused a significant fight, which left Jane in tears, and had Cooper signing, over and over, I love you. I’ll be okay. I love you.

She hated this plan, and she couldn’t come up with a better one, and she hated herself for not being able to come up with a better one.

They pulled into the cabin just after midnight. Cooper grabbed their stuff from the trunk.

“Get some sleep,” Jane said. “I’ll get everything ready.”

She couldn’t make herself look at him. Even though it was a plan she’d helped devise, she was so scared she could hardly think. They’d been in tight spots before. Why did this one feel different?

“Hey,” he said quietly, taking her by the shoulders. “I promise. I’ll be okay.”

“No fancy stuff,” she said, squeezing herself against him. “Pack a gun and use it. No more of this hand-to-hand bullshit. They show up and you take them down. Fast.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The cabin backed onto a lovely lake and was surrounded by thick, dense forest. The location made it the ideal spot to hole up. Coming at them from the lake side would be impossible, and while it was technically doable to come through the forest, they had it rigged with motion sensors.

That left the long, dirt and gravel driveway as the only real point to come at them. It wound about two hundred feet through the forest before coming to an end at a roundabout. The driveway was only accessible from the road.

They turned on all the lights, because, why not? Whoever was hunting them obviously knew where they were, so why bother being uncomfortable? Everything was covered in a layer of dust, but the cabin was well-stocked and functional. It would do just fine.

They threw their things inside and Cooper went right to sleep on the couch in the rustic living room. Jane quietly worked around him to let the poor thing sleep. He’d need it. The problem with this plan was there wasn’t much to do to get ready. Which meant she had an entire night of stewing in her own thoughts.

Tired of the merry-go-round that was her brain, she picked a nothing book from the end table, arranged Cooper’s legs on her lap, and settled in for a long night of trying to ignore herself.

**

Jane cracked her back and yawned as the sun peeked over the lake. Cooper had just started to stir to life. Her eyes were gritty and dry from a night of nothing, so she did a few exercises to limber up. They exchanged few words as they prepared to move to stage two.

Her gear for this mission was pretty straightforward. A gun. Some zip ties for restraint. A walkie talkie clipped to her belt, its partner with Cooper. She was all set.

She hugged him fierce and hard.

“You be careful,” she whispered. She wanted the moment to last forever and she wanted it over with.

“See you soon,” he said. She cupped his face in her hands and gave him a series of kisses.

This was awful.

She didn’t see any other way.

The entrance to the access tunnel was underneath the cabin via a small trap door they’d had built into the side of a rock face, cleverly hidden to blend in with the surroundings. Jane punched in the access code and pulled the heavy steel door open.

The way she and Cooper figured it, whoever was after them would know they were in the cabin. But there wasn’t really any way to track Jane once she was in the tunnels. Concrete was too thick, no way a signal could get through. It let her get into position at the tunnel’s exit, which just happened to be at the road leading to the driveway.

Where they assumed the man in the seersucker suit would be watching.

And that was the core of the stupid, stupid plan. Cooper would stay in the cabin by himself, acting as bait, while Jane used the access tunnels to get to the road. Cooper’s job – wickedly brave Cooper – was to fight off an unknown number of duplicates by himself, while she used her cover to grab the man in the seersucker suit.

Did the plan have problems? Absolutely.

One: She and Cooper couldn’t communicate when she was in the tunnels.

Two: Cooper would need to survive the attack by himself.

Three: Since they couldn’t communicate, she had no idea when she should emerge from the tunnel. Too early and she might give them away. Too late and the man in the seersucker suit would get away.

Their solution to get around this was awful and amounted to her periodically emerging from the tunnel to see what was happening. Such a terrible plan, but Jane and Cooper had learned that when you’re out of options, even a single sliver of hope can become a lifeline.

She made her way through the dark access tunnel, following the glow from the dim, orange lights spaced twenty feet apart. It wasn’t a long journey, and she soon found herself at the exit, staring at the steel exit hatch.

All she needed now was a little luck.

Jane hovered near the hatch, one hand on the rusted lever, the other gripping her wrist to stop it from shaking. Concrete and steel worked like a crude Faraday cage, muffling the signals, trapping them inside. Radio waves hated dense material; the more layers between her and the sky, the better. The moment she opened the hatch, even a sliver, that seal would break. Line-of-sight meant everything. A narrow opening might be enough for a burst transmission to slip out — a single ‘I’m here’ packet to bounce off the world and into someone’s receiver.

But the plan relied on her knowing what was happening topside. One quick glance through a one-inch gap. She could risk that much.

Probably.

And that’s how she passed her the next few hours.

Every five minutes, she’d open the access hatch an inch, crane her head out just enough that she could see if anything was happening before closing it up and getting back to waiting.

After three hours, she’d convinced herself that the plan was flawed. The gap between checks was too long; they’d notice her missing signal and retreat; they’d wait a few days to attack again, and so on. Her brain flickered through the rolodex of imaginary disasters, and it took all of her training to shut her mind off and focus on the controllable.

Peek head out.

Look. Nothing.

Wait.

Peek head out.

Look. Nothing.

Play images of Cooper, dead, on a loop in her brain.

Wait.

Peek head out.

Look. Nothing.

Imagine a life without Cooper and ignore the gnawing pain in her stomach.

Wait.

Peek head out. See car pull up.

A car pulled up.

Jane held her breath. It was happening. Four masked duplicates got out of the car.

Four!

Cooper couldn’t take four. She almost pushed the hatch aside and attacked them herself. But she had to stick to the plan. Had to. She knew how this worked. In the field, in real life, you followed the plan. As much as it hurt. As much as every single square inch of her being screamed at her to protect her man.

Follow the plan.

She watched helplessly, fists clenches, as the four made their way down the driveway towards the cabin. Cooper would be okay, she told herself. Cooper would be okay. He was fast and smart. He’d be okay. She had to believe that otherwise she’d bolt.

To distract herself, she got a better look at the man in the seersucker suit. He was distressingly normal. Bright, polished teeth, immaculate hair, gave off a kind of used-car salesman charming vibe. Urbane, almost.

With the departure of the four attackers, the man turned his head towards the sky, held a finger to his ear and began talking.

“We’re on round three, folks, and I have to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like this. If you’ve been with us since the beginning, you know we’ve never had a Jane and Cooper last this long. Hell of a thing. Hell. Of. A. Thing. I’ll be here the whole time, watching the action unfold.”

Jane struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. He made it sound like a gameshow, like they were being televised. But that was lunacy. Pure, unadulterated lunacy.

She stopped herself from thinking. All she needed to do now was execute the plan. Her brain did quick math before she even realized she was doing it. Four people, on foot, walking slowly, two hundred feet, likely eighty-five seconds, maybe one hundred. Cooper had one hundred seconds.

Her internal count was at sixty. Enough time that Cooper might even see the attackers.

Depends on where he’d set himself up. Depends on—

A gun shot rang out. And another.

The man in the seersucker suit flinched and tilted his head as if listened to instructions from his earpiece.

“He has a fucking sniper rifle?” he exclaimed incredulously. “Are you kidding me?”

Jane smiled grimly and a few thousand pounds of weight fell from her chest. Cooper had seen them. He’d seen them. He’d be okay.

A third shot echoed through the forest.

“Fuck,” the man swore, looking up at the sky. “Well, that was a quick one. I’ll do final take, send me live in three… two… now.” He cleared his throat and put some enthusiasm into his voice. “Well folks, looks like we’re headed to round four. This Jane and Cooper are giving us a real headache, aren’t they just, but stick with us. Remember to tell your friends, we’re in the middle of something historic here. And if you use the promo code, ‘round four’, all one word, you can sign up for a trial account with Draft Kings.”

Jane had heard enough. She didn’t know if this guy was crazy or what, and she didn’t care. The unmistakable crack of gunfire rang out a fourth time and she pushed the hatch all the way open and crawled out.

She ran at a dead sprint towards the car and the man in the seersucker suit.

The driver saw her coming, a look of surprise on his face. He moved to get out of the car, but Jane launched herself into the air and ninja-kicked him in the head the moment he emerged. His head slammed into the side of the car and she rolled backwards, coming to rest in a perfect crouch.

She suspected it had looked unbelievably cool, and wished Cooper was here to see it.

The man in the seersucker suit regarded her with something close to sheer terror.

“You,” he breathed.

“Me,” she agreed. She took two steps towards him and punched him in the jaw. He collapsed, unconscious.

Shaking her hand, she reached behind her belt to grab her zip ties.

Time to get some answers.