He pushed the throttle, and listened to the engine. It still wasn’t responding properly. He shook his head and eased back on the throttle. In the last hour, he’d tried McAllen’s cell phone three times. There was no answer. He wondered if they’d make it to McAllen before the FBI and Mexican police.
32
The first thing Bernadette tasted was blood. Her tongue rolled round her mouth searching for saliva. She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. The right side of her head pounded. Her hands and legs ached. She was tied to a chair.
McAllen was tied to the chair beside her. He looked passed out, his head rested on his chest. Bernadette could see his chest rising and falling. A ceiling fan paddled the air above, gently blowing his hair.
She tried the bonds of her hands. They cut into her wrists. Too tight to even try to maneuver out of, and the bonds around her legs were the same. She looked around the room. It was a large guest room. A refrigerator and sink were on one end of the room, and a few chairs. A single bed was pushed against the wall.
Zara and Adlan were nowhere in sight. An open window let in a stream of bright sunshine. Bernadette turned her head to shield her eyes. She realized at that moment the situation she was in. The FBI in Merida had no idea where she and Anton were. If they did, they could run a GPS locator on her cell phone. She could see her cell phone. It was smashed beside the door. So was Anton’s. Then she remembered—Anton.
Nausea rose in her stomach. She breathed in heavily and swallowed hard. Tears formed at her eyes, and burned hot streaming down her cheeks. The realization hit her that if she had listened to Anton, they would still be outside this villa waiting for the FBI backup. Now, Anton was dead. And she would suffer the same fate at the hands of these terrorists.
Bernadette realized she should have listened to her Grandmother Moses. The dream last night was of a bear and crows. They were telling her of her death. A door opened and Adlan walked in, followed by Zara.
“Ah, it is good to see the RCMP Detective is awake.” He took her badge from his pocket, and read her name. “Detective Bernadette Callahan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.” He took a chair from the room, placed it backwards in front of Bernadette and straddled it. “I have never met one of your kind. The legends say you are fierce, and never give up.” He laughed, pointing to McAllen. “It seems you have found your man—yes.”
Bernadette rolled her tongue around her mouth, seeking saliva to speak. Her voice sounded hoarse as she did. “Let’s say he is a person of interest.”
“Ha, I like that,” Adlan turned and winked at Zara behind him. “You know, I have been a person of interest for some time with the Russians.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Now, we are very glad of your arrival, Detective Callahan. This professor . . .” Adlan turned his head to look at McAllen, “has been most uncooperative.”
Bernadette looked from Adlan to McAllen. “Perhaps you were not being friendly in your methods.”
Adlan grabbed Bernadette’s chin in his hand. His large fingers and thumbs squeezed hard on her jaw. “In Chechnya, the Russians would torture our women to give up information about the resistance.”
He brought his face close to Bernadette’s. His breath was hot on her face. “I was told my children were tortured in front of my wife, and still she would not give me up. Then they tortured her.” Adlan brought a large hunting knife to Bernadette’s face. “They inflicted intense pain on her for hours. She only cried out my name as she died.”
“Zara!” Adlan shouted. “Wake up the professor!”
Zara grabbed a bucket of water and threw it over McAllen. He sputtered, shook his head and looked around. “Ah, I see we have company.” He looked at Bernadette, eyeing her up and down, and then looked to Adlan. “You should have warned me. I would have made some tapas, or maybe one of my special Margaritas.”
“You can see this professor has been very flippant with us. We have been asking . . . perhaps somewhat aggressively . . .” Adlan looked at Bernadette and let out a soft sigh, “for the password to the computer program that holds the formula for the lovely bugs his students created.”
McAllen said nothing. He looked at Bernadette. She saw him assessing the situation. There was a calculation going on his brain. The expression in his eyes said there was a plan forming. His eyes darted from Adlan to Zara. Like someone calculating distances.
Adlan let go of Bernadette’s face. “The professor here has been quite impervious to pain. He seems unconcerned that we could hasten his death. I regard him as a true warrior . . . but I wonder how he can withstand the pain of a woman?”
He brought the hunting knife up to Bernadette’s nose. The large blade reflected the light onto the ceiling. She felt the sharp edge of the blade on her skin. “You see professor . . . with one flick of my blade this lovely nose is gone . . . do you want to be responsible for this?”
“I don’t know who this lady is. How can I feel responsible?” McAllen said, throwing a shrug of his shoulders to bracket his words.
“Ah, that is true, but you will hear her scream. As I do my work, she will die right here . . . right here in front of you . . . for that you will be responsible,” Adlan moved the blade from Bernadette’s nose. The hot blade trailed along her skin until it reached her neck, and then rested on her collarbone.
Bernadette was trying not to tremble. She looked over Adlan’s shoulder and focused on Zara. It was Zara who was trembling. The gun in her hand was shaking as she watched Adlan move his knife over Bernadette’s face as he made threatening gestures.
Zara had just watched Adlan torture McAllen for the past two hours. McAllen was tough. This policewoman looked tough as well, but she also looked at lot like Zara’s dead mother. She’d been tortured to death by the Russians. Zara had heard her screams so many years ago and she trembled to think of another woman suffering that same fate.
“You know Professor, the Russians were fascinated with Chechen women—they excelled in slicing pieces off of them until they bled to death.” Adlan move his blade back to Bernadette’s nose, “. . . perhaps if were started here . . . this might . . .”
“Adlan no!” Zara screamed from behind him. She stood with a gun in her hand, pointed at his back.
Adlan stood up slowly and faced Zara. He towered over the tiny Zara. “Zara . . . shut up.”
Zara faced him; she shoved the gun in his chest. “You will not torture this woman to death . . . I will not allow it.”
Bernadette could see the punch coming. Adlan’s right hand clenched tight. The sinews of his arm corded like a spring. The punch was a classic right cross. It caught Zara under the chin and lifted her off her feet and sent her flying against the wall. She lay there; her head drooped over to the side, her mouth open. Bernadette couldn’t see whether Adlan’s powerful punch had killed her or just knocked her unconscious.
Adlan turned back to Bernadette. He shook his hand, clenching his fist. A few drops of blood appeared on his knuckles. “Sometimes, you see . . .” He motioned to Zara’s crumpled form, “we all have problems with our people . . . and now, I will perform a few surgeries on you for the benefit of our professor friend . . . and see if he feels responsible.”
Bernadette’s body trembled uncontrollably as Adlan’s knife came beside her nose. He let the blade rest there, and then looked over at the professor. “Such a shame to remove so beautiful a nose . . .”
Bernadette breathed deeply, and closed her eyes. If she could have willed her face to back up from the knife, she would have. There was no way out. The knife felt razor sharp, and she tried not to think of what would happen next.
The gunshot was loud. Her ears rang. The sound reverberated around the room in a wave that crashed over her several times before she opened her eyes. Adlan’s body was falling forward. Half his head was gone.
Anton stood behind him. The gun in his hands smoked. A slow curl rose from its muzzle as he trained the gun on Adlan’s crumpled body. The pool of blood from Adlan’s head spread o
ut onto the white tile floor.
“Anton, my God . . . I thought you were dead,” Bernadette said. He looked like a vision, something surreal that had risen from death. She shook her head to make sure he was real. His white polo shirt was a mass of red blood.
Anton picked up the knife from Adlan’s body. “Hey, didn’t I tell you I have Sicilian blood in me . . . it takes more than a knife to kill a Sicilian.” He moved around to Bernadette and cut the bonds on her hands. In bending down to cut the bonds on her feet, he stumbled, and fell to the floor.
Bernadette knelt by his side. “Anton, hold on, we’ll get you some help . . .” She looked around for a cell phone; both their cell phones lay smashed by the door. Adlan didn’t have one, and she checked on Zara . . . nothing.
Bernadette looked at McAllen, “I need a cell phone to call for help.”
McAllen stared at her for a long few seconds, “Sure, I can get you a cell phone . . . but you need more than that. You want to call your federal agents in Merida, that’s going to take them scrambling a chopper to get here. Your friend there . . .” He motioned to Anton with his head, “has got maybe twenty minutes of life left in him . . .”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you untie me and I will call a doctor who lives 10 minutes from here, and I do some triage on your friend with my medical kit. I promise you I’ve done a few knife wounds in my Vietnam days—and after that—you let me go . . .”
“I can’t do that. You have to come in for questioning . . . to solve this thing with these Bio Bugs.”
“Stop being such a tight-assed Mountie, for Christ’s sake . . . your friend is dying, damn it . . .” McAllen lowered his head. “Okay, look, here’s what else I’m going to do, I’m also going to give you a USB stick that has the formula to reverse the effects of the Bio Bugs.”
“You have this?”
“Yes, I have it, I was going to send it to the FBI once I was out of Mexico, but as you can see,” he motioned his head to Adlan, “I was detained.”
Bernadette looked down at Anton, his breath was shallow, and his eyes were glazing over. She needed to act. “Okay, but if you don’t attend to my partner immediately, I will shoot you.” Grabbing the knife she cut his bonds.
McAllen rubbed his wrists, “I’m sure you will.” He went to the bed in the room, and grabbed a cell phone from under the mattress and smiled, “Too many people never look in the obvious places—I stash my money there too.” He dialed a number, spoke in Spanish, and snapped the phone shut. “The doctor is on his way—10 minutes—now your turn.” He threw the phone to her, and pulled a medical kit from a cupboard.
Bernadette called the FBI emergency number she memorized before they left Merida. She told them to triangulate the helicopter on her cell phone, then left it on and placed it beside Anton as she watched McAllen attend to him.
McAllen unwrapped a large gauze pad and applied it to Anton’s wound. “It looks likes there were no internal organs hit. I think we just have trauma and loss of blood, I told the doctor to bring some units of plasma.”
Anton’s eyes started to roll back in his head, his breathing shallower. Bernadette started to slap his cheeks. “Anton . . . stay with me . . . Anton . . .” She heard the sound of footsteps running towards the room.
33
Bernadette looked up at the door. She expected to see the Mexican doctor there. Four people entered the room. Three men stood with submachine guns, and a woman with what looked like a stun gun in her hand filled the doorway.
No, Bernadette realized, these aren’t Mexicans. From their looks, not American either, she had a feeling that things had made a turn for the worse—if that were even possible.
The square-looking one with dark features stepped forward, motioning with his machine gun at Zara. “I see you have captured our Chechen’s for us.”
“Yes,” Bernadette said, “That is Zara Mashhadov, and the late Adlan Kateav is there on the floor. And you are?”
“I am Viktor Lutrova of the Russian Security Force. We have been chasing these suspects for some time.”
Bernadette stood. “I am Detective Bernadette Callahan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. My partner here,” she motioned to Anton, “is with the Canadian Security and Intelligence Agency—I have the FBI on the way. I’m sure they’ll turn Zara over to you once she’s been questioned by the FBI and the Mexican Police.” Bernadette couldn’t believe her tone. The Russians still trained their guns on her.
Viktor turned to the woman; she said something to him in Russian, the word McAllen was at the end of her sentence. She pointed to him with her stun gun.
Viktor nodded his head, and turned back to Bernadette. He advanced a few more steps. His machine gun leveled at her chest. “My associate informs me that you have Professor McAllen in our presence. We will take him back to Russia with us; we understand he knows the formula for those little Bio Bugs that have been a problem for all of us.”
McAllen didn’t look up from where he was applying a large gauze pad to Anton’s knife wound, “I’m not going anywhere with you. Russia, the USA or any other country will not be getting the formula. I only have the antidote, I destroyed the formula.”
The man behind Viktor said something to him in Russian. Viktor seemed deep in thought. Bernadette sensed the tension in the room go up a notch. The third Russian standing beside the fallen form of Zara took the safety off his weapon. Bernadette sensed there was something unsteady about him. He weaved as he stood.
Viktor looked back at Bernadette, and down at McAllen, “That was a nice speech, professor. But you will come with us, and one of our associates in Russia will extract the formula from you, with a small amount of persuasion.” He smiled, a set of perfect white teeth framed in tense lips.
“I can’t let you do that,” Bernadette heard herself saying. She stepped forward towards Viktor. His gun barrel was touching her chest “God,” she thought, “first a knife, now a machine gun . . . not my day.”
“Professor McAllen is in my custody, and also a Canadian Citizen. If you leave here with him, I’ll have you stopped by the Mexican Police.”
Viktor laughed, “My dear RCMP lady, with one burst of this gun, we will have your silence.”
Bernadette didn’t see Viktor take the safety off his machine gun. She heard the click. The click was loud—it reverberated into her solar plexus. Her body shuddered in anticipation of what it expected next—a hail of lead.
Something moved by the door. Zara leapt up and grabbed the machine gun from the weaving man beside her. Bernadette could see what was coming. She hit the floor.
Zara put a full round into the drunk Russian. She swept the weapon across the Russian woman and the other two men on full automatic. Viktor had only seconds to return fire. He caught Zara with a burst to the chest, but she kept firing.
Zara, badly wounded, grabbed a fresh clip from one of the fallen Russians, and walked from one Russian to another, firing a shot to each of their heads. Bernadette could see the hatred in Zara’s eyes as she put a well-aimed burst into each of them as they lay on the floor.
Zara collapsed by the wall. She dropped the smoking weapon. Bernadette rushed to her side. She could see there was no saving her; a sucking sound was coming from her lungs. Bubbles foamed in the blood. She was fatally wounded.
Bernadette knelt by her side, and put her mouth to Zara’s ear. “Thanks for saving us.”
Zara could barely speak. In a whisper she said, “It was all about the hatred . . . the hatred for the Russians . . . you just got in the way . . . ” Her head dropped to one side. She was dead.
A Mexican stood in the doorway. A stethoscope around his neck, a black bag in his hand, he muttered, “Ay, dios mio,” as he surveyed the carnage of bodies.
Bernadette motioned him to look after Anton. A young Mexican lady came behind the doctor with a bag; the doctor got her to assist him. They broke out plasma and syringes and began triage on Anton. McAllen gave the doctor instructions in Sp
anish, and then walked over to Bernadette.
“Looks like this gun fight is over,” McAllen said looking around the room. He reached into his jeans pocket and produced the USB stick. “Here’s the antidote I promised. Tell them to administer the formula, just as it’s written here. You can tell the scientists that I neutralized the God Gene; they’ll understand that, most others won’t. The world will be fine in the morning.”
Bernadette heard a boat outside. A sleek white boat tied up alongside the pier. A man that looked like Willy Nelson, with long grey braids falling out either side of a faded baseball cap, was running towards the house, a gun in his hand. Two others followed him. Bernadette knew it was Sebastian, Percy and Theo.
McAllen went to the balcony and waved. He shouted, “I’ll be right down—no need to panic.”
“We heard gun shots—is everyone okay?” Sebastian asked. He stopped in mid-stride.
McAllen looked back into the room and smiled at Bernadette, “Yeah, all those who matter are just fine . . . I’ll meet you at the boat.”
He turned back to Bernadette, “Well detective, looks like we cross paths again, nice seeing you.”
“You need to know that the American and Canadian governments are offering you a complete pardon, and immunity if you’re implicated in any way with the Bio Bugs,” Bernadette said.
McAllen paused for a moment then touched her arm, and squeezed it gently. “That’s mighty nice of them, but you have to know I don’t trust either of them. When it comes down to it, they’re probably just as bad as the Russians. If they give me a pardon it would mean they’d want to see if I could recreate something else as a biological weapon. No, I think I’ll take my chances with my boys and me being on the run.”
Pipeline Killers: Bernadette Callahan. A female detective mystery with international suspense. (Book 2) Page 23