It was a high stakes game, playing one covert power broker against another. But Michael could see no other path through the current situation. The only way to take their attention off Yuki, and George and himself, was to get them to turn their attention on each other. And all things being equal, it was probably better for everyone if Burzynski prevailed, rather than Meacham. Best of all, however, would be if they destroyed each other.
George went back to the car to dispose of the bodies. There wasn’t much time. All he could do was start a fire in the woodshed. That would be hot enough to obscure their identities for a while. He also half hoped Emily would see the fire and come back early. When he returned to the main house, Yuki stood in the doorway as he approached glowering at him.
“Where is she?” she demanded. George looked at his shoes and took a step a backward, as if afraid she would strike him.
“She’s out there,” he said nodding to the woods.
“What were you thinking, leaving her out there at a time like this?!”
“She’s on her way back,” he said defensively, trying to sound confident. “She’ll be here soon.”
“If anything happens to that girl...,” Yuki snarled turning back into the house.
Michael loaded Yuki’s things into the cab of an old pickup truck and motioned to George to bring her out. “There’s not much time. We gotta go now!”
Yuki was reluctant to leave without at least seeing Emily. Anyone could read the anxiety written across her face. George’s attempts to reassure her did not rise to the level of persuasion, nor did Michael’s supportive facial expressions. In the end, Yuki understood the necessity of leaving right away. She knew Michael had made arrangements to keep them all safe, and they depended on decisive action. She got in the truck, rolled down the window, looked George in the eye and growled: “Find her. Keep her safe.” He felt the full force of her anger and frustration.
“I will,” he said.
Michael drove off with Yuki, leaving George watching after them in the driveway. He followed them as long as he could still see their tail lights. They passed through the main gate, turned right and disappeared behind the front hedge. They would head over to Route 64 and then go west through West Virginia and Kentucky, changing vehicles several times along the way.
George went into the garage and rolled out an old dirt bike. He concealed it in the woods behind the main house. His plan was to put Emily on the back and ride out along some old logging trails through the forest, slip into the Monongahela Forest in West Virginia, switch to a car he had already stashed in Mill Creek, a little town on the edge of the park. Now he just had to find her.
The sky was just beginning to get light. It was probably approaching five am. He began to worry he would not be able to find Emily in time. Yuki was right. He had blundered, sending her out into the woods by herself. But he hadn’t known what else to do. He couldn’t risk having her go with Michael and Yuki. That is, he was afraid to put everything that mattered to him in one car. He knew she’d be safe in the woods, no one would find her out there. If he had not been able to return from the meeting with Porter, he needed to know she’d be safe, at least for a little while. But after that, she’d be on her own. He had imagined the worst contingency and tried to prepare for that. But now things were looking to be not quite so dire, he realized the inadequacy of his plan. If he only had more time, several hours perhaps, he could track her, maybe find her, though with every weekend spent in the woods she was getting harder to track. As it was, he wasn’t sure he had even ten minutes.
George went into the main house and set fire to the curtains in the living room. He spread gasoline from a large gas can. He hoped if Emily saw the fire, she would know something was wrong and come back from the woods. It was a desperate move, he had no other way of getting her attention. But the fire did not spread fast enough.
He went back out to the driveway to keep a lookout for Emily. He scanned the tree line at the edge of the north lawn for any sign of her. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted movement in the hedges to the left of the main gate. There was no way that could be her. Meacham’s tactical team was already here!
George ducked behind the garage. If only they hadn’t seen him, he might be able to seize some slight advantage. Meacham probably sent two teams of four. They would be heavily armed, probably wearing kevlar body armor. They wouldn’t need night vision gear. With the approach of dawn, the blazing fire in the woodshed and fire beginning to peek out of the windows of the main house, there was enough eerie light to see the entire scene pretty well. He couldn’t risk a shootout with these guys, even if he had a gun. Emily might get caught in a crossfire. He knew they were focused on the main house. No diversion would get them to forget their primary mission: subdue the inhabitants, apprehend Yuki and Emily. His best chance was to induce them to enter the main house as quickly as possible.
He knocked over some garden tools, a rake, a wheelbarrow, a bucket, all to create a clatter, and ran quickly to the front door of the main house. Bullets whizzed past him on all sides. He felt one graze his side just as he burst into the house. It didn’t feel like a serious wound, but it burned like a hot poker resting just below his ribs. He tumbled into the dining room. The living room was pretty hot now. The drapes were in full blaze. Some of the upholstered furniture near the outside wall was beginning to burn. The bookcases would catch fire soon.
One team would come in through the front door. If he was lucky, they would be temporarily forced to focus on the fire in the living room. The other team would circle around to the kitchen entrance, with an eye on the garage. He needed to find a way to get the second team into the house before Emily arrived. At least then she would have a chance to size up the situation before encountering them.
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Chapter 6: If you can’t stand the heat...
When Emily came to the edge of the forest she had already seen the fire in the woodshed. She had only suspected something was wrong from Promontory Rock, but now she could see that nothing at all was right at her home. She just caught a glimpse of Yuki driving off with Mr. Cardano, and then saw her father apparently setting fire to the main house. Strangely, the security guards were nowhere to be seen. She had also spotted something much more ominous: suspicious activity in the hedges off to the left. There were several men moving as quietly as they could manage through some rather dense and noisy underbrush. She circled around to her right, always remaining concealed within the verge of the forest.
She made her way to the point in the north lawn where the woods came closest to the estate buildings, about fifty yards from the corner of the garage. From this position, she had a very clear view of her father, crouching against the corner of the building, peering over a low shrub toward the hedges. “Thank God! He sees them too!” she thought with a palpable feeling of relief.
Just then, she saw him scatter some tools with a clatter and burst from behind the shrub towards the main house. They saw him too! He was running as fast as she had ever seen him go. He only had to cover twenty yards to get to the cover of the house. She didn’t hear the muzzle report of any gunfire, but she could definitely hear the sound of bullets ricocheting around her father as he turned the corner of the front portico. And then she saw that the whole house seemed to be on fire! She desperately wanted to run to her father, to see if he was hit, to warn him about the fire, to wrap herself in his arms. But she knew she should hold back, wait just a moment, see what those men were up to. They didn’t know she was there yet. She might need that advantage.
They had guns, seemed to be very heavily armed. She saw them running toward the house. They had to cover about a hundred and fifty yards. She shifted her position further to her right, trying to find a position as close to the kitchen door as she could manage without drawing their attention. This brought her to a position near the blazing woodshed as well. She discarded her backpack and got ready to run. Her jacket was dark brown, but she was wearing khaki pants and an
orange tank top. It wasn’t ideal camo, so she would need the cover of the fire.
She saw eight or nine men crossing the lawn, firing as they ran. Four of them ran straight for the front door. The rest peeled off and circled around toward the back of the house, pausing to consider the garage. Once they made it to the kitchen, she would have no way to get to the house. She had to act now. There was no more time to wait, no more deliberating. She moved quickly, but deliberately toward the corner of the house near the kitchen, keeping the woodshed between herself and the last position where she had seen the second team. The brightness of the flames kept them from seeing her, but it also kept her from seeing precisely where they were. At least, they weren’t aware of her presence yet, she hoped, so they wouldn’t be looking for her in the fire.
She heard a noise from the house. It sounded like muffled gunfire. There was a crash and the sound of breaking glass. She peered as far around the woodshed as she dared. The men in the driveway ran toward the house, some toward the front, the rest burst in through the kitchen door. Emily followed them in as closely as she could without attracting their attention. What she saw when she cleared the door was a full on gun battle. Two men in the kitchen were laying down a steady fire into the public rooms of the house. Even more gunfire was returning their way. One man had sustained a significant leg wound, another was trying to help him out of the line of fire. None of them seemed to see her..
Emily’s first thought was to launch herself at the two who were shooting into the rooms where she assumed her father was. But the gunfire was too hot to make it worth the risk. If she were shot or killed, she would hardly be any help to her father. Her next thought was to make her way to the kitchen staircase and down to the basement. From there she could come up at the other end of the house where she might be able to help her father.
She cleared the staircase and entered the furnace room. Peering through the doorway into the rec room, she saw her father walking unsteadily from the other end of the basement. He was bleeding from his left side! She ran to him, threw her arms around him. All she wanted was to hold on to him. He winced. She slid around under his right shoulder and helped him stand. With the relief of seeing her, he breathed a little easier. Now to get them both out of there.
“Quickly, Chi-chan, downstairs,” he said in a sharp whisper.
“Okay, Dad. What’s going on upstairs? Anyone else up there?”
“No. We’re all that’s left. Come, quickly.” They slipped behind the bar where a door in the floor covered the ladder to the lower basement. Emily lowered the door over in place them. It wouldn’t conceal their escape route for long. At least it wasn’t the first place they’d look. It might buy them a few minutes at best. The sound of shooting died away. The tactical teams, or what was left of them, must be regrouping. In the initial onslaught George had managed to disarm the first man through the front door and used that gun to dispatch the next man through. He ducked into the study off the dining room, crouched in its doorway, and fired into the kitchen as the second team entered there. They returned fire through the dining room and living room. The remainder of the first team fired back. George slipped down the basement stairs in the confusion.
“We need to get out through the tunnel before they make it down here. Hurry, Chi-chan.”
“I’m on it, Dad. Let’s go!”
Unfortunately, the enemy was already there. Somehow. But, how?! One man in black tactical gear burst out from behind the door to the tunnel. George saw him just as he was pulling his gun up to fire. He knocked the gun to the side, slapped the man hard across the face and shoved him back into the tunnel door, slamming it closed with considerable force. If there was anyone else in the tunnel, this would contain them until he could settle with this first attacker. The man sprang up with a huge knife in his hand, and lunged towards George.
Emily was paralyzed in shock. She desperately wanted to help her father but found herself rooted to the floor. She watched as he parried the lunging knife. His left arm appeared to move in a lazy circle around the man’s right hand. It had an almost hypnotic effect. She couldn’t quite see how it happened, how he controlled his opponent’s arm. He twisted the arm out and away, slapped his face again with his right hand, and sent him sprawling backwards in a complete flip. He stood over his attacker, holding his wrist as he pressed a foot to the side of his face. The man reached for the gun, which lay just within reach. George pulled up on the arm sharply and stomped down hard on his face. He stopped moving.
Emily was stunned by the blunt violence of her father’s skills. She had never seen him in a fight before. She found it both thrilling and terrifying. He didn’t have the luxury of fighting from out of the stillness of his qi, that much was clear. He had too much to lose: he fought to keep her safe... and he was bleeding out of his side. The important thing was to find the most direct way to dispatch this man, prevent him from firing his gun, or alerting the men upstairs, not to mention whoever might be behind him in the tunnel. Emily understood her father perfectly, appreciated him as never before.
George picked up the gun, tore open the door and fired several rounds into the tunnel. The light from the muzzle flairs didn’t reveal anyone. The tunnel was clear. The men upstairs had found the trap door behind the bar. Emily pulled the dead man into the tunnel and pulled the door closed, hooking him to the handle by his gun strap. The barrel caught on the doorframe. They ran as fast as they could to the other end and out into the woods.
The sky began to show blue. It took only a moment to find where George had left the motorcycle, collect their packs, kick over the engine and speed off into the woods. They were going much faster than Emily felt was safe, strictly speaking. But she figured her father wanted to be out of sight or hearing when the tactical teams emerged from the tunnel.
They rode for a couple of hours through the woods, hardly ever coming out from under the canopy of trees. If anyone was looking for them from above, they would be practically invisible. They stopped a couple of times to rest, and to give George a break from the jostling of the ride. His wound was starting to bother him. Blood had soaked all the way through his jacket. Emily began to worry.
“Dad, we gotta get you some help,” she pleaded.
“We have to keep going. There is no help around here.”
“How far is the nearest town?”
“Chi-chan, it’s another thirty minutes to the car.”
“Dad, you can’t make it that long, can you?”
“I dunno. I think you’ll have to take over from here. You up to it?”
“Trust me, Dad. I can do it. Clutch with my hands, shift with my feet, right?”
“Oh, Lord,” he snorted. Fortunately, Emily turned out to have a better understanding of how motorcycles work than she let on. There were only a few rough bits at the beginning. Her father hugged her from behind, and held on for dear life. He couldn’t remember ever feeling any happier than at that moment.
By the time they got to Mill Creek, he looked much weaker. Emily saw how pale he had become. She tried to dress the wound with a first aid kit from the trunk of the car. The hole wasn’t large, and the bullet seemed to have missed his ribs. It had entered and exited apparently without injuring any organs. But he had lost a lot of blood. He lay in the back of the car. She seemed to have stopped the bleeding. Emily drove as her father directed her to the interstate. They headed north to Pittsburgh.
At a steakhouse in Morgantown, Emily got takeout and George ate what he could in the back seat. His plan was to take a northern route through Ohio and Michigan, eventually make their way to Montana, where they could hide out in the wilderness for a few weeks. He knew there were lots of cabins in the area around the Kootenai National Forest, and many of them would be empty in late October. From there they could travel south to New Mexico and meet up again with Michael and Yuki. The entire trip would take a couple of months, plenty of time for their trail to go cold.
Emily understood the plan perfectly. It was just li
ke her father. He would elude the enemy who expected him to move quickly by moving as slowly as possible without remaining completely still. Everything would be direct and deliberate, nothing rushed, nothing decided in haste, and yet still be utterly elusive. He would make the enormity of the country his ally instead of his obstacle.
George lay across the back seat as they bucketed up interstate 79 and pondered their situation. He could feel his strength ebbing. He sensed he didn’t have much time. But he couldn’t leave Emily without telling her the truth. He’d been looking for the right moment to tell her everything for the last few years. She wasn’t a child anymore. She wasn’t exactly an adult yet either, but she might have to become one in a hurry. This wasn’t the moment he was hoping for, but he was afraid there wouldn’t be a whole lot more moments to choose from. She would be pissed at him, he knew, for all the lies. But he had had his reasons. He just hoped she would see the wisdom of his schemes and precautions, too. Fortunately, the truth he would tell her would have a happy side as well.
Emily pulled the car into the Grove City Airport parking lot. It was a sleepy spot this time of day, a good spot to give her dad a rest from the ride. He propped himself up on a bag and reclined against the back door. He was pale as a sheet. Emily looked at him in horror. “He must be bleeding internally” she thought. She tried to simulate a cheery expression to keep his spirits up. He wasn’t fooled.
“Open that up.” He motioned to one of the packs in the front seat. “I need to talk to you about something in there,” he said.
Emily looked in the pack and pulled out Yuki’s rice balls. “Wow, this is just what I need, Dad! You didn’t make these, did you?” She handed him one and took a bite out of one herself. Those were definitely not what he expected to see come out of her bag. Still, he decided to get right to it.
“Your mother always knows what to make for you,” he chortled.
Emily laughed. She was glad to hear a lighter tone in his voice. It took a moment for her to register what he had just said. She turned her eyes directly into his, trying to read his face. What was he saying? “No, it couldn’t be,” she thought. “He wouldn’t make a joke about that.” She felt a tug in the deepest part of her stomach. Her eyes flashed.
Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 5