Petteri had no response.
“So, I shot him. It wasn’t planned, but when I was in the lobby in Denver, I found my opportunity. After all, you ran away to save your own ass. I couldn’t pass up the gift you’d given me. I took him out to help these people escape you again.”
“Thanks for that,” Grace replied. “You saved our asses.”
She curtseyed.
Every muscle in his body was tense and rigid. His anger percolated behind his eyes, causing explosions of black and white speckles in his vision. But he wouldn’t let the female terrorist, butcher, betrayer, murderer get to him in front of everyone. Instead of snapping back at Howard’s killer, which he desperately wanted to do, he instead searched for a way out. For rescue.
Mr. Aarons leaned against the RV, being useless. He’d dropped his weapons and seemed content to surrender to the terrorists. Rescue would not come from him. Who was the next security person in his organization? Could he contact them? Could they swoop in and save him? There had to be a way to salvage his position.
After his personal escape, he was going to avenge Howard even if it was the last thing he ever did. But for the moment, as Dorothy and her rabble stared at him, he had to act defeated.
He hung his head low. Scheming already.
Chapter 26
The Rim, WY
Petteri no longer seemed so intimidating to Grace. With his allies abandoning him, and his trucks halted on the road, his ability to hurt her or any of her friends was about zilch. He was surrounded by men and women with plenty of guns. However, she did notice him whispering into his suit jacket.
“Hey, he’s talking to someone!” she shouted.
Butch was already holding him. He whipped the smaller man away and peeled off Petteri’s gray sport coat at the same time. He discovered a small radio.
“Who were you talking to?” Butch asked, pulling out the device.
Petteri smiled, but revealed nothing.
Grace was anxious to ask him more questions, but her phone meowed. It seemed there couldn’t be anything more important than what she was doing, but the cat’s meow kept getting louder. Even Petteri looked at her as if she should answer it.
“Fine,” she said, pulling it out of her pocket.
“Grace? It is Misha here.”
She could barely construct a reply. “Really?”
“Yes. Why surprised?” Misha always talked in basic English with a thick Russian accent.
“You were a wreck when I last saw you. I take it they fixed you up at the hospital?” She walked away from the RV and the action there, wanting to keep her conversation away from Petteri.
“I stayed one day. Plenty long.”
She gasped. “You were hit by a grenade!” Thinking of her history with the ex-hitman and how he operated, she realized the timing wasn’t a coincidence. “Where are you now?”
After asking the question, she scanned the highway, wondering if he was on one of the dump trucks. The drivers had gotten out. Many stood beside their trucks or sat in the grass next to the trees. Her rangers mingled with the workers, checking to ensure everyone was all right or if they needed anything. Typical ranger activities when there wasn’t a war going on. Misha could be anywhere in the convoy, but it would take a long time to walk to the rear of the line. The convoy still wrapped around the bend in the road, out of her sight. It might go back for miles.
“I got call from friend. He told me where to find Petteri.”
Grace peered down the road toward the drivers one more time, sure he was out there. Then, realizing the five huge dump trucks were still on the move, she turned around and watched them continue to roll away. Was he in one of those? “Was it your friend Jake Ray? He helped me find Petteri, too. But everything is over. We captured him. He’s standing right here with about twenty guns aimed at him.”
Misha was silent for a long pause, before continuing. “I am sorry for what transported between us. No. That is wrong word. Transpired? Is correct use?”
She chuckled. “Yes.”
“Ah, I am sorry for what transpired between us. But I cannot—”
A man yelled from close by. “A helicopter’s coming!”
The whump-whump chop of a military helicopter came from ten feet above the trees. In seconds, it was directly above the RV.
“Grace? Are you there?” Misha seemed concerned.
“There’s a helicopter above me,” she complained. “Hang on a second!” The blowing rotor wash made it difficult to hear the phone.
As everyone watched above, someone in the helo dropped a small boxy object that fell about ten feet in front of the RV. Her first thoughts went to it being a bomb or a grenade, but Butch saw it come down and he didn’t flinch. He trotted over and picked it up as the helicopter drifted up the highway, toward the flattened trucks.
“It’s a radio,” Butch declared.
It was already on. A man’s voice came out. “This is helo extraction team Petteri-Exit-5. We respectfully request you surrender him to us, or we’ll turn a few of your people into paste.”
The helicopter descended until it was a few feet above the pancake that was once her park service Chevrolet. The rear door of the aircraft was already open, and a man sat at the rotary machine gun. She knew the drill.
Petteri laughed sarcastically. “You can’t win. You had to know it deep down, right? I’m way ahead of you. I’m always planning two moves beyond each failure, and three moves beyond each success. This evacuation is one of those plans for failure. Unfortunate, but necessary.”
The wealthiest man in the world stood tall. “I’ll be going now.”
The Rim, WY
His call for backup from Mr. Aarons might have failed, but he had a helicopter on standby, listening to his radio frequency. When he saw his chance to call in the big guns, he’d whispered the code word into his lapel radio, which the idiot terrorists had failed to take off his person.
They stepped away from him as if he might explode, which was the respect he demanded from them. “I’ll be going now,” he added for good measure.
The insufferable young park ranger was the only one who didn’t seem scared. She immediately put herself between him and the waiting helicopter. “You can’t get away with this, you know. There are a million witnesses to your plots. Dorothy has the goods on you. Even your security man won’t back you up.”
They both turned back to Mr. Aarons. “Are you coming?” Petteri asked.
His security chief remained affixed to the side of the RV. “I’m not a murderer. I’m also not one to support child abuse, like you did with those videos. I have two daughters.”
Petteri didn’t see the big deal. “It was fake, don’t you get it? She exposed me for what it was. Stricker didn’t do anything to those kids. It’s all good.”
Craig became angry. “But your stunt guy actually hurt those people. It was fake for Stricker, but real for the kids in that foreign country. You’re a sick man, Mr. Tikkanen. You made that happen. I’m out.”
Yes, he was disappointed in Mr. Aarons. He’d disobeyed a direct order to kill the girl. He’d suddenly become sensitive about third-worlders. He was positive Major Howard would have pulled the trigger without making a civil case out of it. As had been proven by Dorothy and Aarons, he had a lot of team rebuilding to do once he was safely in a non-extradition foreign nation. Or space. He could leave Earth completely. A man with his resources could literally do anything.
Petteri decided to step around the girl, but he couldn’t resist rubbing his successes in her face. “You should know, these dump trucks are all carrying worthless gravel dug up from next to my asteroid. Do you really think I would put all my ore in a slow-moving, easy-to-stop convoy such as this? The only trucks with actual ore are the ones in the front.”
“The giant trucks?” she said in astonishment.
“Of course. There’s nothing on Earth that could stop those, as we saw with your silly roadblock. I made sure—”
Dorothy inte
rjected. “Actually, sir, those trucks will collapse the first bridge they cross. At almost four hundred tons, no bridge in America is going to support one of them. Don’t forget, I’m the one who planned your route and said it was all smooth sailing.” She chuckled to further the insult.
Inwardly, his anger burned hotter than the core of the sun. Outwardly, he simply smiled coolly. “It doesn’t matter. The bulk of my ore has been flying across the western mountain range for the past four days. Around the clock. Helicopters. Cargo planes. I’d use blimps if I could find them. The ferry operation has been going on beneath everyone’s notice, even yours. It all went to an isolated rail depot in Idaho. Most of the ore is already in Canada. Ha! Suck it.”
It felt good to be so crass.
He found it heartening to see her back away. It had been critical to have all of his most trusted subordinates laser-focused on other threats. He’d grabbed one of his egghead logistics ladies and put her in charge of moving the ore over the mountains. He didn’t even know her name. Didn’t want to know it. Of all the people he’d been dealing with over the past week, no-name Nancy was the only one who came through for him. Still, it was another of his fallback for fallbacks. He was still in the game.
Mr. Aarons decided he had more to say. “You said those were personnel flights. More and more TKM guards were coming in. I should have known that was fishy. We never had enough men.”
Petteri didn’t even bother addressing the bearded military man. He was dead to him.
Now with everyone behind him, he turned around to face them. “I have an army of lawyers who will make sure that everything you think has been a victory for you will soon turn into a decisive defeat.” He turned to Dorothy. “No matter what you think you have on me, I’ll make sure this litigation drags on for a lifetime. The news works for me. Stricker will soon have to face a nagging press on why he was in a foreign country abusing the local population. The fine print way down the page will say something about it possibly being fake. Maybe he’ll be charged with other crimes in the meantime. You never know.”
He turned around with a spring in his step. The helicopter hovered above the flattened wreckage on the highway. If the pilot were top-notch, he would have hovered over the clear pavement before the roadblock, so he didn’t have to walk into the field of debris like a chump.
As he approached, the man at the oversized machine gun gave him a curt nod. He then stepped away from the weapon and came over to the edge of the cargo area. Petteri expected him to hold out a hand to help him up, but instead he hopped out of the helicopter and stood before him.
“Help me up!” he yelled.
For some reason, the rotors slowed. He tried to get a look at the pilot, but couldn’t see inside. The goon standing in front of him was blocking his view.
“We have to go!” he insisted.
The man didn’t move until the engine noise died down. Petteri became uncomfortable with the delay. Many of the terrorists were creeping up behind him, as if they saw an opportunity to pounce.
“I insist you help me onto the helicopter.” Not wanting to allow the rotors to come to a complete stop, he tried to go around the man. However, the guy grabbed his arm and shoved him back.
“What the hell? Get me out of here!”
The man in the drab flight suit pulled out a flat board of some kind, then held it in front of his chest. Petteri was surprised at seeing it but recognized it as a white board. Written in thick green letters, he read out loud, “This is for my wife and mother.”
“What’s for them?” He was furious. “What in god’s name is this about?”
When the guy removed his helmet, Petteri saw a ghost.
“Misha? I—I—” he stuttered. His brain shifted gears. Hard. “I can pay you whatever you want.”
Misha flashed a wry smile. “That is your problem. You think money is like magic. Put some here, and geologist goes away. Put some there, and you fight off Native Americans. Put more over here, and Misha loses wife and mother.” The Russian revealed a pistol held at his hip.
“Wait!” Petteri cried out.
Misha fired fifteen times, but Petteri, the richest man in the world, only heard four of them.
The Rim, WY
Ezra raised his gun along with the rest of the people around him when the helicopter crewman shot Petteri dead. No one fired to stop him, however, though he couldn’t say why. For him, it seemed like the asshole had it coming. The whiteboard message suggested it had been personal.
Once the guy dumped his full mag, he dropped the handgun to the ground. Above him, the rotors of the helicopter had almost come to a halt.
The man put up his hands. “You will find pilot unable to fly.”
Grace stepped forward, to Ezra’s immediate dismay.
“Misha? Why? We were just talking on the phone.” She held up her phone as proof.
“I know. I tried to explain but did not think you would understand if I told you what I planned to do. I do not care about the asteroid or funny business with rocks. I give my life to pay him back for killing Anna and my innocent mother.”
Ezra stepped forward a few paces. “Grace, don’t get too close. He might have other weapons.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Dad, this is the hitman who chased Asher and me across Yellowstone. He’s not going to harm us.” She turned back to the Russian with a look of distrust. “Are you?”
He kept his hands up. “Misha works for no one but Misha now.”
Grace did the opposite of what he’d requested. She got near to the man and held out her hand. “Thank you for turning out to be a decent human being.”
After checking to make sure he wasn’t going to be shot, he lowered one arm and grabbed her hand to shake. As he did so, he looked around. “I am curious if any of you know Jake Ray? He told me to be here.”
“Jake?” Grace replied. “You mean you don’t know him? You told us to find him. You told us he was your friend.”
Misha nodded. “He is friend, yes, but I do not know him. He is—”
“I’m Jake Ray,” a woman interrupted.
Ezra saw the words come out of the mouth of the black-haired woman—Dorothy.
She continued. “I’ve been helping you both, and a few others out there.”
Asher laughed. “How did you guys not know he was a she?”
Dorothy scowled. “If I’d been myself, Mr. Tikkanen would have figured out I had betrayed him. I needed to disguise my voice over the phone so I could operate freely. It turned out to be unnecessary, though, as he had no idea I was working against him. And…” She faced Misha directly, “I understand why you did this. Why you killed him. He’d been threatening my dad, Secretary of Homeland Security Stricker, for years.”
Misha shook hands with the other woman, then he gave himself up to the park rangers. His daughter seemed intent to speak on behalf of the Russian when life got back to normal, though he would have been happy if she’d avoided ex-hitmen altogether.
He and Grace met near the bullet-mangled body of Petteri. “Well, Dad, now you know what I’ve been doing out here. I’ve been running from hitmen. Running from tycoons. Running from crazy ladies with big machine guns.”
“You didn’t mention machine guns,” he replied.
“I’ll have to tell you all about it.” She pulled Asher closer to her. “But first, there’s a question Mr. Creighton would like to ask you.”
“There is?” Asher asked with embarrassment.
“Yes,” she insisted. “You were going to ask him when you met him. Here he is, my dad.” After a brief pause, she playfully poked her friend in the ribs.
“Oh, right. That.” The young man seemed to bolster himself to ask the question. “Sir—”
Ezra interrupted immediately. “You have my permission.”
Asher froze. Grace’s mouth fell to her chest.
“What?” Ezra went on. “I could see from the instant I met you that you’re in love with my daughter, and she feels the
same way about you. A father has an instinct for these things. You have my permission to begin courting my Gracie.”
Grace let out the big breath she’d been holding. “Oh. I thought you were giving him permission to marry me. I mean, you didn’t think?”
Ezra laughed heartily. It was always the same with his little girl. She constantly tried to bite off more than she could chew. He casually clapped once, congratulating her for the good effort.
She and Asher both clapped one time in response. Then the three of them shared looks of surprise back and forth.
“You two are playing the game with each other?” he asked, touched by their actions.
Grace took Asher’s hand, which he readily gave. She flashed her toothy grin at Ezra. “Dad, I’m afraid I have to tell you that you’re going to lose someday. It’s now two against one.”
He tried to hold back tears. Butch stood nearby, Haley’s arm wrapped around his waist. His family was together in a way he never would have imagined back when he was standing on his boat with Susan. Back before the asteroid. Back before…losing her. Still, life had to go on.
“I look forward to playing against you two every day for the rest of my life.”
“Me, too, Dad,” Grace said, bringing him into their mutual embrace.
A heavy weight landed on his back as Butch and Haley joined in.
“Me, three, Dad,” Butch joked.
Chapter 27
Yellowstone National Park, WY (One Year Later)
“Grace, you want to share a glass of wine with me?” Asher stood by the open refrigerator. In singsong, he added, “We don’t have to drive for a few days.”
“No, but I’ll have a Coke,” she replied, using a bit of her Kentucky drawl. “It’ll travel easier on the way to the bus station.”
Impact | Book 6 | Dig Page 21