Undeniable

by Tom Grace

  Palmer grabbed hold of a belt strap and carabiner and quickly descended to the ground. As he opened his van, he saw his beloved Deena and the man ascending the porch steps toward the farmhouse’s front door. The farmer and the boy disappeared from Palmer’s view into the large milking barn, the dog at the boy’s heels.

  Palmer unlocked the van’s rear door and climbed inside. As his system powered up and the disruptor toroid rose through the van’s roof, he removed the safety belt and climbing gaffs from his legs and stowed them in a bin along with his hard hat and safety glasses.

  This was the least prepared he’d ever been and never before had he struck in daylight, but there Deena was—and their son.

  Fortis Fortuna adiuvat, he thought, Fortune favors the brave.

  A crude wire frame image of the farmhouse and surrounding structures appeared on the monitor. He saw an odd mix of lines drawn in the older buildings, doubtless abandoned remnants of knob-and-tube wiring from the first generation of electrical service brought out to the rural countryside. Wires from the utility pole Palmer had mounted ran to a solitary pole on the opposite side of the road, along the edge the Young farm. The pole was held in place vertically by tightly strung guy-wires. Power and telephone wires ran down the pole’s side and disappeared into the earth—Young had paid the additional expense of routing the utilities on his property underground.

  While Palmer’s equipment could detect even low-voltage wiring in structures above ground, the insulated and well-shielded cables laid underground proved more difficult to accurately map, and he had only just begun his reconnaissance of the farm. Based on what he had, Palmer selected the bundle of wires running down the utility pole and activated his disruptor. The familiar low hum filled the interior of the van, followed by a crackle of static and silence. He then adjusted his equipment to emit an electromagnetic field to interfere with landline and cellular phones.

  Palmer carefully stepped out of the back of the van. The car that brought Deena to him was still in the driveway. He saw no one on the porch and assumed Deena and her companion were now inside the house. Feeling the pressure of time, Palmer dispensed with donning a Tyvek suit, grabbed a pair of bolt cutters and moved purposefully across the street toward a service gate in the fence surrounding the farm’s pastures. He located a weathered padlock and cut the shackle.

  The holding pen nearest the road was empty, but several cows grazed on bales of hay in more distant pastures—too far from the buildings to be affected by the disruptor. Palmer saw no movement near the house or barns and carefully opened the gate. Its oiled hinges gave way quietly, and he closed the gate behind him. He moved quickly up the service drive toward where he last saw the farmer and the boy.

  The generator emitted a dull, constant drone, its four-cylinder engine running smoothly at eighteen thousand revolutions per minute. It was the only sound Palmer heard. He located a door to the milking barn and tested the lever handle—it was unlocked. He slowly opened the door and stepped inside.

  Bodies of cows littered the floor of the barn, many still connected to milking machines. Palmer placed his hand on the chest of the nearest animal and felt the shallow rhythm of its breathing. Stall by stall, he quickly searched the barn. He found the dog first, then the farmer and the boy. The farmer’s legs were pinned by the neck and head of an unconscious cow. A two-way radio lay on the concrete floor.

  The boy had apparently been seated on a low stool and appeared unharmed by the short fall to the floor. Palmer knelt down and gently stroked the boy’s light brown hair.

  “At long last, my son, I’ve found you.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “Yes?”

  Iris Young greeted the two strangers at the front door of her home with a guarded politeness. Her trim, athletic figure was clad in blue jeans and a yellow fleece pullover.

  “Are you Iris Young?” Deena asked.

  “I am.”

  “And you have a son named Kirk?”

  “Yes, but who are you and why do you want to know about my son?” Iris asked warily.

  Deena failed to suppress a faint smile. Despite the fear this situation had aroused in her, a flood of affection welled up inside her for the woman who stood before her. The woman who became a mother to her son.

  “My name is Deena Hawthorne. I gave birth to your son.”

  Iris gaped, eyes wide as she stared at the woman standing before her. Then, in an instant, she saw the hints of her son in Deena’s eyes, the shape her nose, and a dimple near the corner of her mouth. Then she looked at Nolan.

  “Are you Kirk’s biological father?” Iris stammered.

  “No, ma’am, but your son’s biological father is why we’re here. We believe Kirk may be in danger.”

  “Oh, my God. What kind of danger?”

  “Have you heard of the Sandman?” Nolan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We believe he is Kirk’s biological father, and that he is trying to find your son.”

  “This can’t be.”

  “Believe me,” Deena said, “I’m just as horrified as you about this. I’d hoped he would never be released.”

  “Released? From where?” Iris demanded.

  “I’m so sorry. I never wanted Kirk or you to know about any of this” Deena began to cry. “It’s just so hard to say.”

  “What?”

  “In polite terms,” Nolan said, “Deena’s relationship with your son’s biological father was not consensual.”

  “Oh no. Please, come in while I round up my husband and son.”

  “That’d be a good idea,” Nolan said. “You and your husband both need to hear this.”

  Iris stepped back from the opening to allow the couple to step inside. The lights in the house flickered briefly, then returned to normal.

  “That’s probably just Hank fiddling with the generator,” Iris explained.

  She led them into a kitchen dining area that spanned the entire back half of the house with a view of rolling hills dotted with black cattle.

  “Have a seat. I’ll give my husband a call.”

  Nolan sat down at the large wooden table. The big family kitchen reminded him of his grandparents’ home. Iris went to a built-in desk where she ran the household and picked up a two-way radio.

  “Hank, I need to talk with you.”

  Deena was immediately drawn to a wall covered with a child’s drawings and photographs. She covered her mouth and felt her lips tremble when she espied a series of vertical marks on a doorjamb charting Kirk Young’s growth through the years. She marveled at how quickly the time had passed and how tall and handsome her beautiful baby had become.

  “Hank, pick up, hon,” Iris said. “It’s real important. Please pick up.”

  Iris moved to the window and looked toward the milking barn and generator, but saw no sign of her husband and son.

  “Problem?” Nolan asked.

  “Hank always answers unless he’s elbow deep in a cow’s backside, but none in our herd are ailing or ready to calve. It’s not like him not to answer.”

  “I have no problem going to him,” Nolan said.

  “It’s probably nothing. His battery might be dead. All I’m getting is static,” Iris said. “I’ll just call him the old-fashioned way.”

  Iris clipped the two-way to her hip and stepped out onto the back porch. A steel triangle and wand hung from the beam that supported the porch roof. She picked up the wand and rang the triangle with the unmistakable intensity of an alarm. Iris stared expectantly at the milking barn but detected no movement in response to her summons. Not even the dog.

  FORTY-NINE

  Palmer heard the frantic clanging outside the barn and remembered the triangle hanging from the porch beam. The beat was impossibly fast for the gentle breeze and far too steady to be anything but man-made. He felt a surge of adrenaline and steadied his breathing to compensate.

  Think, he urged himself, think!

  The farm’s wiring, with multiple buildings and a gener
ator pushing power back into the grid, somehow isolated the house from his disruptor. Palmer knew that Deena and the man she’d arrived with were at the house with the farmer’s wife. How they had come to be at the Young farm still troubled him for it indicated a flaw in his methodology, but he would deal with that later. His first priority still had to be securing his son. He would then take Deena, if that was possible, and kill anyone who interfered.

  Hank Young lay face up and motionless on the barn’s concrete floor. He wore a Philadelphia Eagles knit cap on his head and a black version of the jacket Palmer had on. Palmer donned the cap and went to work removing the man’s coat. Unzipping the jacket revealed a holstered pistol on the farmer’s hip. He extracted the weapon—a Colt 1991. Palmer ejected the magazine and counted seven .45-caliber rounds. He reinserted the magazine and chambered a round.

  “ . . . up Hank, please pick up,” the farmer’s wife pleaded from the two-way.

  Again, the triangle clanged—a frantic summons for the unconscious man and boy.

  Palmer finished removing the man’s jacket and replaced his own. Pistol in left hand, he picked up the two-way with his right and walked toward a door at the far end of the milking barn—the door closest to the farmhouse. He pressed down on the lever handle with the edge of his right hand and pulled the door open. The clanging stopped. Through the opening he saw a woman standing on the porch staring expectantly at the barn. Palmer slowly emerged from behind the door with his right arm extended, shaking the two-way to indicate the device was faulty. He kept his face turned down and the pistol concealed as his head and torso came into the woman’s view, her eyes momentarily distracted by the waving hand.

  Then Palmer looked up, raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger. The Colt bucked in his hand as the round exploded from the barrel. Iris Young staggered back as the bullet tore through the shoulder of her jacket before hammering into the wood siding. Tufts of eider down blossomed down from the point of impact. Iris spun with the blow. She turned on the heel of her boot and darted back into the house. Palmer’s second shot shattered the back door window.

  “Stay away from the windows,” Nolan told Deena at the sound of the first shot.

  Iris dove through the open doorway, chased by Palmer’s second shot. Nolan lunged and grabbed Iris in mid-air and pulled her clear of the opening. Shards of shattered glass rained down on them both. He kicked the inner door closed.

  “I’ve got you,” he said.

  “That man is not my husband,” Iris said in panicked gasps. “What’s happening?”

  “Something we’d hoped to prevent,” Nolan replied. “Do you have any guns?”

  Iris nodded. “This way.”

  She led Nolan to a small office on the far side of the house. Beside a pair of filing cabinets he saw a gun safe. She set the two-way radio on the desk and quickly entered the code to unlock the safe. Inside, Nolan found an impressive array of hunting rifles, from which he selected a .30-06 Browning Automatic Rifle. Iris unlocked one of the file cabinets and reached for a box of ammunition.

  “Ow,” Iris gasped, pulling her arm back tight against her torso.

  Nolan saw blood oozing from the tear in her coat. He had seen this happen before, when the initial numbness of a sudden wound gave way to sharp pain. He moved to support Iris and gently eased her into a seated position on the floor.

  “Deena,” Nolan called out, “she’s been hit.”

  Careful to keep out of view from the windows, Deena joined them on the floor of the office and carefully worked to loosen Iris’s jacket and shirt to expose the wound.

  “I’m a doctor,” Deena said. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

  “In the pantry,” Iris replied, her color turning ashen.

  Nolan nodded and retrieved the kit from the pantry and set it open on the floor. The bloody groove scarred the top of Iris’s shoulder, less an entry wound than a deep gouge in the flesh. Deena cleansed the wound and covered it with a large, sterile dressing pad.

  “The phones are dead, and I’m not getting a signal on my cell,” Nolan reported. “He must be jamming them.”

  Deena appraised her work on Iris’s shoulder. “That should hold for now, but it’ll need more than a bandage.”

  “That man was wearing my husband’s hat and coat,” Iris said. “What has he done to him and our son?”

  “I’ll do what I can for your family,” Nolan promised as he loaded the rifle and pocketed a few extra rounds. “Can you shoot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be ready if he tries to get into the house.”

  Nolan took the radio, opened the double hung office window and stepped out onto the porch. The bulk of the house stood between him and the shooter. He quietly leapt over the railing and moved quickly in a low crouch around to the rear of the house. Several large evergreen bushes provided cover as he found a spot with a clear view of the area between the house and the milking barn. He saw no sign of the man who shot at Iris. A hiss of static crackled from the two-way.

  “Send Deena out,” the voice on the two-way shouted.

  “Lord Byron, I presume,” Nolan replied.

  “She mentioned me to you? With fondness, I hope.”

  “You left a lasting impression.”

  “We were quite close once, but I’ve been away for a while. I feared she might have forgotten me. Moved on, so to speak. To someone like you, perhaps.”

  “You made your mark on me as well. I’d certainly like to return the favor. By the way, the boy is not your son.”

  “Really? Your presence suggests otherwise.”

  “It suggests only that we figured out how you’re picking the children—at least the ones you think you might be related to by blood. Your presence proves we’re right.”

  Nolan bolted from behind the shrub toward the towering old barn.

  “I see that you’re armed,” Palmer said. “As am I. It seems we are at an impasse.”

  “Surrender and everybody gets out of this alive.”

  “Including me?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “A tempting offer, but I have a counterproposal.”

  Nolan heard the crack of a gunshot, followed a second later by another. He positioned himself to cover the doors on the long side of the milking barn. The door near the anaerobic digester opened just a crack. He leveled the rifle, estimated his distance, and adjusted his scope. The door was flush steel with no window—impossible to know if Palmer was behind it.

  “I’m leaving with the boy,” Palmer announced.

  “He’s not your child.”

  “Then I won’t have any qualms about killing him, will I? Attempt to stop me and I will kill him. Attempt to follow me or impede my departure in any way and I will kill him. Do we have an understanding?”

  “Oh, I understand, all right.”

  “Excellent. And just so we’re clear—”

  Palmer fired twice through the open doorway at the large methane storage tank. The volatile gas detonated within the vessel creating a concussive shock wave that tore the weakened steel wall open between the two bullet holes. A gout of blue flame erupted from the jagged rupture, obscuring Nolan’s view of the door.

  Through the fire Nolan saw a large silhouette emerge from the barn—a man carrying something over his right shoulder. Smoke and waves of heat distorted what he saw, and he could not risk taking a shot.

  Nolan ran back around the old barn in time to see Palmer disappear into the back of a PP&L maintenance van with an unconscious boy slung over his shoulder. The rear doors quickly closed.

  “Very good,” Palmer taunted. “Now, I do have one small favor to ask. Instead of shooting my tires, shoot your own.”

  “Screw you,” Nolan replied.

  “Do it, or I kill the boy.”

  Nolan stopped in the Young’s driveway, took aim at the rental car and fired. A quick burst deflated the driver’s side front tire.

  “Happy?”

  “Not yet, but soon I suspect.�
��

  Palmer started the van and pulled away. As the van accelerated, Palmer tossed the two-way radio into the brush. Out of view from the farm, Palmer tapped a few buttons on his dash. The disruptor toroid retracted and the roof panel slid back into place. The van’s exterior shimmered, the PP&L logos disappeared and the body panels turned a shade of deep burgundy.

  FIFTY

  As soon as the van raced away, Nolan ran into the milking barn. A few of the stricken cows lowed weakly as they regained consciousness. He searched through the aisles until he found Hank Young lying on the concrete floor in a pool of blood with the head of a cow pinning his legs. Neither man nor animal stirred.

  Dropping to one knee, Nolan placed two fingers on Young’s neck and found a pulse. He quickly searched Young but found no sign of a gunshot wound or any other injury.

  This kind of blood loss should kill a man, Nolan thought before solving the puzzle.

  He quickly found two, closely spaced holes on the top of the cow’s head. Blood draining from the wounds blended in with the animal’s coarse black fur until it spread on the floor.

  “Hank!” Iris screamed.

  Rifle in hand, Iris ran to where Nolan crouched over her fallen husband. Deena followed with the first aid kit.

  “It’s cow blood,” he shouted as she quickly closed the distance. “Your husband is just out cold. Aside from a dead cow on his legs, I think he’s fine.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Iris said as she knelt beside her husband. “Where’s our son?”

  “Palmer took him. I didn’t have a clean shot.”

  Nolan stepped around to the far side of the cow and lifted the animal’s head. Deena carefully pulled the dairy farmer away from the cow and examined both limbs for obvious breaks.

  “We won’t know for sure until he wakes up, but the bones feel like they’re the way they’re supposed to be.” Deena said and then checked her patient for a transdermal patch, but found none. “Whatever Byron used here is different than last night. I think he’ll come around on his own.”