Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6

by Isherwood, E. E.

  His voice came out. As soon as it started, he knew where it was going. “We drugged him, dumped him in a local brothel, sprinkled in some young-looking women, and a few young men for good measure, then took a million pictures of him.” It was from his private conversation with Dorothy a short time ago.

  He laughed on the tape, then added, “We can do wonderful things with deepfake technology. That’s where you put the face of one person on the body of another. We filmed a fat man, a sort of body-double, savaging the poor losers in the whore house. Then we placed Stricker’s face on the grainy film, convincing him we had hours of him abusing the young, the old, the handicapped. Believe me, when we showed it to Stricker, it served as the proper warning. He said he’d kill his own family for us, if necessary, to avoid releasing them.” There was a pause in the tape. “We snooped around for his family ties a few weeks later, by the way, because it would have been another source of leverage. His wife and one daughter died before we got to him. The man had no family. He was being dramatic.”

  Dorothy turned the recording off. “I’ve uploaded this to a dozen websites. Don’t bother trying to have me offed. You’re done for.”

  Petteri couldn’t comprehend a word she’d said. The recording seemed to come down from outer space and land on his well-manicured lawn. He couldn’t reconcile the collision of the two worlds. When he was finally able to form a coherent thought, he went for the obvious. “Why in the hell are you telling all this to these terrorists? Don’t throw away all the money you’ve got coming to you. Not for someone like Stricker.” He spit as he said the name.

  “I assure you, you have no idea who the real Tanner Stricker is. Before he lost his wife and daughter, he was a loving father and a doting husband. Before he lost his wife and daughter, he enjoyed riding bikes, taking long walks, and staying in shape. Before he lost his wife and daughter, he would have done anything to protect them.”

  “But—” he tried to say.

  She straightened her back in defiance to him. “Your mishap with the asteroid gave me the opening I needed to see how you operate, learn your weakness, and then take you down.”

  He still had no idea what she was talking about. He’d seen her revulsion at the mere mention of Stricker’s name. His game of tempting Stricker with the young executive was designed to tease the man further. It also worked to see how far Dorothy was willing to go to become a part of his inner circle. He’d watched them both. The man wanted to see her as much as she wanted to avoid him. They couldn’t have planned it…

  “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “What’s going on here?”

  She mocked him in a whiny voice. “I don’t understand. I’m only the most powerful person in the universe. I control everything and everyone. Whatever do you mean, little woman who I’ve used to drop nukes on American cities…”

  He still couldn’t escape from the iron grasp of the man holding him. “Now, wait a minute, my dear. You and I know that was done by Nerio Torres. I have video. Audio. It shows her betrayal.” As he said it, the tumbler clicked into place. “It was fake, wasn’t it?”

  She laughed. “Turnabout’s a bitch isn’t it? My gear isn’t as sophisticated as your deepfake software, but it didn’t have to be. You saw what you wanted to see. I just made a pretty screenshot to make you believe the space launch of your nuke-powered maintenance drones was really happening. There are no nukes coming down, by the way. There never were.”

  He jumped and shifted his weight, red-faced pissed off at what was happening to him. He threw a spittle-filled final question at her. “But you had everything. Billions! Why did you do all this for a sucker like Stricker?”

  She gave him a look of pity, slowly shaking her head. Dorothy glanced at the terrorists, speaking sarcastically. “Does anyone here not know who I am, after I just explained everything to him?”

  Grace Anderson slowly raised her hand. “You’re the daughter.”

  “Impossible!” he huffed, breathing rapidly. “I already told you, he had no family. We checked.”

  Dorothy rolled her eyes. “I’m his daughter all right. Not dead. My father had skills, too. He faked the death of Mom and me and backdated it a few years so you wouldn’t go snooping for us. As I said, you saw what you wanted to see. It’s one of your many character flaws.”

  He concentrated on his breathing. He’d lost his cool with her. That was the way to ruin.

  Dorothy wasn’t giving up. She got in his face. “You should know, I don’t take kindly to men who would willingly put a woman in the hands of sexual predators. Howard is the one who put me in the room with my dad. He didn’t know we were in there talking about how to coordinate your destruction. He didn’t know I was in there explaining how to slowly take away your giant rock collection. He didn’t know I was in there drawing up contracts which worked against you. All he thought was that I was in there being pawed at by a sicko, and he did nothing to help me.”

  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 ranger
s 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 interjected. “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.