“You have to stay here. I’ll go see if I can find Jose. Echo must be with him.” He moved quickly to the back of the house, passing by the monkey cages to Chloe’s father’s study, where he was stunned to find Jose grasping Echo’s hand while Chloe’s uncle held a gun to the head of a man sitting on the floor, surrounded by paper money. Paper money that didn’t quite cover the dead body of Chloe’s old nanny, Mrs. Elbarad.
*
“Daddy?” Jose turned his back on the two men to see Scotty and Chloe standing at the doorway behind him. Jose turned back to Brooks, with one thing on his mind.
“Why would you kidnap my sister? You were our friend. Papa . . . my mama . . .” Jose held Teddy’s blanket in front of his face, the horror fully dawning. “Oh my God, no . . . this was made by my mama. It was wrapped around my baby sister when she was kidnapped. How . . .?” He slowly turned to Chloe, tears flowing. “Chloe? Omar Nasir is your father?”
“Yes, what’s going on, Daddy? Uncle Brooks, what are you doing?” Confusion evident, she backed away as if to escape the sinister sight, incomprehensible facts unraveling in front of her. “Daddy, what’s happening? How do you know Scotty’s brother? Why are you saying all of these horrible things about Uncle Brooks?” She seemed to finally see the gun in Andrew Brooks’ hand and the body on the floor. “Mrs. Elbarad, oh, my gosh.”
“Chloe, you know you’re my baby girl.” Omar pleaded from the floor, his hand stretched out to her.
They were all surprised when the shot came. The noise was paralyzing, and everyone froze in place as the ramifications left them speechless. Omar Nasir, the Presidential hope of the Socialist New World Party, lay in a pool of blood, his gelatinous brain matter plastered all over the artfully marbleized salmon walls behind him. Scotty reached out in shock, grabbing Chloe, who stood hyperventilating. Crushing her to his chest he instructed her to breathe.
Jose tried to bring himself under control. He needed time to think. Brooks still held a gun on them. He looked directly at Brooks in confusion.
“You killed my parents, kidnapped my baby sister for Mr. Nasir? And then you shoot him? He was going to be President. Why? Why . . . all of this? Why did you have to kill my papa, my mama?” His voice sank again with the enormity of the dead bodies lying on the floor. Things from his childhood flashed back to him. After the murders, the empty monkey cages, his constant grogginess, the infant cries on the airplane taking him to the United States. “You drugged me.” He was astonished, but it explained so much. Well planned and well funded.
“Omar Nasir? You could almost say he works for me. I answer to Mohammed al Qua Terique of the Salafis. We owned Omar Nasir.” He said it so proudly, the light of a madman gleaming from his bulging eyes. He gave them a long look.
“Jose and young Chloe. Ha. You both need to get over yourselves. You were just necessary pawns, needed in our efforts to package Omar for the stupid American public. Omar’s wife cracked up after the death of their baby. A real nut job. Unstable and unreliable. We were forced to keep her hidden away until she snapped out of it. We tried a few methods of self-medication ourselves. Nothing worked. After a while, we realized the only thing that might work was another baby. Unfortunately, she could no longer carry a child. So we concocted a fabulous idea. Don’t blame me. What else were we to do?
“Chloe fit our requirements perfectly. Your mother contracted polio while she was pregnant with Chloe, giving her the immunities she would need to avoid the disease herself. We went to great lengths to make it happen, as you know. The only reason you were not killed along with your parents was because I had taken a shine to you. You loved my little monkeys. No one knew I had not killed you. I think I went over and above what anyone would have done. Didn’t I find a nice home for you? I kept my eye on you as long as I could. I had to disappear eventually, hoping to avoid the very kind of thing that has just happened. You could have unraveled everything. I guess I have no one to blame but myself. What an unwelcome coincidence to find you here. Coming back to bite me in the ass, eh? But we did find the perfect infant to lure Mrs. Nasir out of her depression. We had the perfect picture of the happy youthful political family, just what we needed to seduce the stupid American public.”
Senor Brooks took a long hard look at Jose. He stared right back, hatred flaming his eyes through his sunglasses. Senor Brooks exhaled, a long sigh sputtered from his throat. “If it makes any difference, I have grown quite fond of Chloe. But not that little rat of hers. Goddamn dog. Sorry to say that our plans have changed. The house staff is long gone, their planes taking them to safety. Sorry I can’t extend the same opportunity to all of you. The little rat will be the first to go.” So saying, he raised his gun and took a shot at Teddy who stood unprotected on the floor. The little dog collapsed, and Chloe screamed hysterically, her arms flailing in the air out of control.
Turning to Scotty, Brooks motioned to Chloe.
“Do you mind shutting her up?” Brooks suddenly noticed Echo watching from behind Jose’s legs. Extending his gun hand, he pointed with it. “What in the hell do you have there? Send that little thing over to me.” Leaning down, Jose whispered hurriedly to Echo.
“Echo, that is a very bad human, he wants to hurt us.” His mind aura turned turgid.
“I cannot let that happen, Brother Jose.”
“That’s enough talking there. Send the creature over to me now.”
As Echo walked haltingly toward Brooks, her crystal antlers split open, sending her mysterious emulsion to hit Brooks smack in the face.
“What the fuck . . .?” His voice gurgled as the emulsion ate into his skin, taking it down to the bone, eating everything, even his clothes. The gun fell from his hand as his fingers disappeared. As his skeleton teetered, the emulsion disappeared back into Echo’s antlers as fast as it had arrived, the crystal seamlessly sealing back up. The skeleton crashed to the floor, breaking the spell that had held them in its thrall.
“Holy shit. We’ve got to get out of here.” Jose turned to run. “What’s the matter with Chloe?” She was lying on the floor in a fetal position, Teddy at her side, blood running out of his little body, pooling under them. Teddy’s pupils were fixed, Chloe’s glazed and unfocused. Scotty knelt at her side, feeling for her pulse. Panicking, he screamed for Echo, who already had her tail in the air sending out her healing to Teddy.
“We have to go, Scotty. Let me take her. You grab Echo and Teddy.”
“No, I’ll take Chloe, Echo needs to heal her.” He pushed Jose away, gagging on the smell of sulfur.
“Stop. This is my sister. You know it’s forbidden for Echo to heal more people. Chloe’s just fainted.” As Jose’s voice broke, Scotty backed away allowing Jose to scoop up his sister. They ran to the next room where the monkeys stood at the front of their cages, mouths agape, tiny hands gripping the bars to see what was happening. Jose glanced away.
Running to the SUV, he slid her onto the back seat, then belted her in. Scotty lifted Teddy and Echo into the Jeep, having first deposited Chloe’s suitcase on the front seat. Teddy appeared dazed but on the road to recovery.
“Watch Chloe, I’ll be right back.” Crossing the road, he ran over to the Jeep. “I need you, girl.” Echo stood up and jumped into Jose’s arms. Together they ran back to the mansion. It only took a few minutes before they were back outside, the elderly monkeys following, recipients of Echo’s implants. They calmly but quickly leaped into the back of Scotty’s Jeep, sitting quietly like a group of little wise men, their diminutive fingers busy grooming to keep themselves soothed.
“I couldn’t leave them behind. They’re innocent.” Jose started his SUV while Scotty ran back to his Jeep. Hurrying home with Chloe on the backseat, Jose wondered if the obvious evacuation of the guards and staff at the Nasir mansion had anything to do with the flight from Sarasota that Abby was planning. Clearly, something bad was going to happen, he just didn’t know when. He thanked God that he had decided to come back to Florida instead of waiting for Abby on Lily Pond Roa
d. That decision had, astonishingly, brought his sister back into his life. He wiped his hands across his eyes, his tears hot, his eyes swollen. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs to relieve his overwhelming feelings of impotence. He wanted to punish the selfish psychopaths himself. He wept painfully with the knowledge of how his family had been used in such a brutal and monstrous fashion.
He watched the monkeys in the rearview mirror. They had saved his life in Costa Rica. The least he could do was return the favor.
He would take them on the yacht with Abby’s cats and dogs. Maybe they would help him recover from the shock of this savage revelation. At the worst, the monkeys would remind him of the small satisfaction he had got watching Andrew Brooks’ self-satisfied smug face as it disintegrated in front of him.
Chapter 16
The suburban Dallas landscape reveled in the hot and dusty weather—just what the suburbanites expected every day. Joe wouldn’t actually call it suburbia though. There was not a house in sight for ten miles. His gritty tired blue eyes looked down the road seeing just raw dust and scrub. Hot and dusty didn’t quite cover it either. Try roasting and scorching. He lifted his sweat-soaked ten gallon off his pounding noggin, wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He could feel dust collecting in the crevices of his clean-cut athletic features. He spat on the hard-packed clay under his feet, feeling the grit on his teeth. Behind him, he could smell the heat radiating off the hot tarmac, creating shimmering windows which blocked his view of the line of private planes along the side of the hanger.
He glanced at his watch, seeing his new employer was ten minutes late. Nothing to get his dander up about as Jenny would tell him. She had made great strides with him since the baby had been born. She really knew how to create a relaxed and harmonious ambience in their gracious Dallas village home. It was for the baby, of course. But it helped him relax too. He smiled to himself, as he realized the strides he had made in his ability to manage his stress had come directly from Jenny and the baby. He was sorry they hadn’t started a family as soon as they were married.
Their first serious meeting had occurred on a long layover in Buffalo, New York where they had been snowed in due to a winter storm heading toward the frigid town. As part of the flight crew, the pilots had all been invited to an impromptu party in a suite the flight attendants had located. He and his co-pilot had decided to attend, even though he usually avoided such events. Not because he wasn’t interested. It was just that as one of the few single pilots in the fleet, he was always a target for husband-hunting flight attendants. He preferred to date back home in Dallas.
He had noticed Jenny once before on another flight, but they hadn’t had the opportunity to talk. Her pretty feminine face was something he would have been attracted to anyway, but he had been charmed to find she was a woman with varied interests beyond her job. That meant no shop talk for her, another bonus in his book. Joe and Jenny. It hadn’t taken long.
The baby had come three years after they were married. Jenny left her job to become a full-time mother. That meant he needed to pick up the slack with some freelance flying on the side. A pilot for hire on short-term jobs, just the puddle jumpers. His schedule was flexible enough that he had been able to fit in a couple jobs per month, without any effect on his responsibility to his airline.
He had been contacted for this flight through his online ad on an aviation site. It had turned out to be a good source of business for him. He glanced at his watch again. Now they were twenty minutes late. He knew he was overly punctual. He had to be. But he felt surprised that they were late. His plan consisted of flying an executive and some trade show supplies to Vegas for a convention. Eyeballing the small planes on the tarmac through the heat shimmers, he didn’t see anything he thought suitable for his executive. Except for the light jet on the end, by itself. A Citation CJ4. A little fancy for a remote little airport like this, and he didn’t think they would use anything that big for one man and a couple of cardboard boxes of brochures.
The searing heat beat down, sucking his energy, leaving behind a tired and flagging spirit. The client had specifically asked that he wait outside the shack that served as the cool spot for filing flight plans. Damn. He hoped he wasn’t getting stood up. He pulled out his cellphone, checking the dial. Nothing there. Well, at least he had their deposit.
A faint rumble intruded on his thoughts. He looked down the road to see a plain white delivery van approach, coated in road dust. He didn’t really expect the van to be his executive. In his experience, they liked to travel in style. Limos and private drivers. Especially executives who could afford to travel in private jets, even if they were only hired for the moment.
He watched the two men from the truck walk toward him. They both looked dark skinned, faintly Middle Eastern. Their clothes were ordinary to shabby. Not what he expected. A faint tingle of alarm sounded in the back of his head. Everyone knew to be suspicious of middle eastern types around aircraft these days. He dismissed his concern as overly suspicious. What would be the odds? Nothing abnormal had ever happened to him in his thirty eight years of life.
“You Joseph Lansing?” The tall one held out his hand. “I am Abdul Ahad. I am pleased to meet you. This is my associate, Tarek.” Joe shook hands with them both. Tarek said nothing. Abdul seemed to be in a state. Joe could see sweat beading on his forehead as fast as the heat sucked it away. Is the man sick?
“You okay there, Abdul?” He glanced with concern at Tarek who punched Abdul in the arm and mumbled some Arab words to him. They must have helped because he straightened up and gave a quick weak smile. Joe’s tingle of alarm grew stronger. Nah, I must be watching too much television.
“Captain Lansing, I would first like to show you what you will be flying.” Tarek motioned with his hand to the end of the runway and the Citation. Together they strolled toward the jet, while Abdul peeled off to bring up the van. As the van passed them, Jose noticed it seemed to be riding low on its shocks.
“So, Tarek, you’re my passenger?”
“No, Captain. Abdul is your passenger.” They had reached the Citation as the white van pulled up to the jet for unloading.
“Now hold on there, Tarek. My understanding is I’ll be flying a corporate executive to Vegas for a convention. Seems there’s a small misunderstanding here.” His tingle had now turned into a jackhammer and he knew he had to get out of there.
“No misunderstanding, Captain.” Tarek smoothly extracted a handgun from underneath his loose cotton shirt. “You are flying to Las Vegas, Nevada. Home to the hedonistic capitalistic western devils. My friend Abdul is more than a stupid western executive. He is a martyr for his homeland, his family and his religion.”
Oh, shit, are you kidding me? His bowels took a hit as they loosened. “Hey, hey, buddy. This isn’t my fight. I’ve got a family, a brand new baby.”
“Shut up.” Tarek raked Joe with the butt of his handgun, the warm metal leaving a gash across the side of his temple to his eyebrow. The blood flowed heavily down his face. On a signal from Tarek, Abdul opened the back of the van, releasing three other men who began pulling something to the edge of the tailpipe. They left it resting there while they released the hatch and pulled down the storage door to the jet. Joe could not make out what the object was, but he had a pretty good idea.
“You can’t make me do this.” Joe’s brave words didn’t even merit a comment. He was yanked back and dragged to the rear of the van where they knocked him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly. Pulling him up, he had difficulty breathing. His ribs felt busted where the more vicious kicks had landed. His head was pounding from his contusions and the heat made his injuries feel ten times more painful.
Tarek grabbed a fistful of his thick black hair, yanking his head back. The sun beat down unmercifully on his bloody face. He glanced to the side, noticing that Tarek had something in his hand.
“Let me show you what a good photographer Abdul is.” He thrust a photograph in Joe’s face. Joe squi
nted, vainly trying to make out the figures in the photo. As the blood cleared from his eye, he saw one of the men from the van holding a tiny baby in his arms, facing the camera and smiling. In the background he could clearly see the form of a bald woman making love to a man. No, her hands were tied and being held by another man. She was being raped. God no, please. He could make out the feminine features of his Jenny’s face as she lay screaming, her mouth opened wide while the man atop raped her. And her hair, what—? He squinted. It looked like her hair had been yanked out by the roots; blood and clumps of hair littered the floor around her head.
“What a lovely baby boy you have, Captain. If you would like him to remain a boy, you will cooperate. Let us commence with our preflight checklist. Are we on the same page now?”
Joe barely heard what the man had said. He knew his life was over. Tears slipped from his eyes at the thought of them hurting their baby. And Jenny. He wondered if she was still alive. His knees buckled, crashing him to the ground. They pulled him to his feet.
“I think the Captain needs a little incentive.” Tarek held out his hand. One of the men slapped a cellphone in his palm. Looking at the dial he pressed a number and held it to his ear, then gave an order in Arabic. The phone was then held up to Joe’s ear. He could hear an infant screaming in the background. Then Jenny.
“Joe, they have the baby. Do what they want. Please Joe. They have the baby.” She sounded hysterical.
“Well, Captain, shall we begin?” Tarek snapped the cellphone closed. Feeling like a zombie, Joe allowed himself to be led to the cockpit. He was on autopilot, going through the motions. In his numbed state, one thing was clear to him. He would not survive this. Nor would his family. He wiped away bitter tears, trying to think of the love he and Jenny had been lucky enough to share, if only for a while. That was all you had on this Earth. A while.
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