“Police, stop in the name of the law,” she cried, turning the volume up to boom, and striving for a voice of authority. “Weapons down. We have you surrounded.”
She had no idea if anyone was paying any attention. She located the switches that turned on the security monitors and flipped through them. There was no camera at the back of the mountain where the bulldozer operated, but she found the monitor overlooking the construction road to the back exit.
A rental truck rolling slowly down the rutted road picked up speed as she watched.
“Stop that truck right there, young man,” she shouted into the microphone. “Freeze where you are.”
Instead, the truck driver hit the gas, veered off the road, and aimed for a broken gap in the chain link fence.
Well, she shouldn’t have expected criminals to listen to the law.
She tried Ana’s phone again and told voice mail what was happening while she flipped through various cameras until she found Zander. The camera showed that he was out of his bakkie and examining the machinery that ran the ramshackle Ferris wheel. She remembered the reverend crowing happily over the gift of old amusement park rides. He’d had the engineering department working on them in their spare moments. She’d seen some of the rides running when they first arrived but not since. What did Zander think he could accomplish?
He fiddled with a box, and the wheel suddenly lit up in a colorful array of lights against the gray clouds.
She bounced happily in her seat. A twinkling amusement park ride ought to startle a few people into looking up. The criminals had to know they were being watched. Was that enough to make the rest flee? Only if they realized cops might ask to see what was behind the locked door.
She wished she had a camera behind the mountain to see what the bulldozer was doing. She flipped to a view of the front gate to see if anyone was leaving that way.
A fancy black sedan had stopped in the entrance, and a chauffeur was unfastening the lock. Reverend Arden drove a white bakkie like the one she’d stolen, so the sedan wasn’t his. Who else would have a gate key? All the teachers? The board?
She checked her phone. Had their frantic calls to Graham and 911 been heard? They hadn’t had time to do much more than cry for help and give a location. She couldn’t hear sirens from this sound-proof booth. Would police use sirens for runaway bulldozers?
The Ferris wheel began to creak into jerky motion in a bright glow of red, white, and blue. Cheering at this most excellent diversion, terrified for Lucas, Julie added her own touch. She slid a CD into the slot and played the gloriously dramatic tribute—“The Star Spangled Banner.”
Into the microphone, she announced the only other phrase she remembered from the dreadful American TV shows Zander liked. “Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up.”
She’d almost forgotten the rental truck racing for the fence. At least that driver believed her announcements. She caught its motion on the screen when it hit a fence post near the gap it had aimed for.
The image on the screen exploded in fire, flying mud, and truck parts.
Chapter 26
My blessed Uber driver hit the gas as we reached the rural road leading to the park. I couldn’t reach Graham. Julie’s frantic messages about bulldozers and Lucas filled me with confused horror. I checked over my shoulder but no one was following.
That was because they were ahead of me, I realized with shock, looking out the front window as the park gates opened. A woman in a fur coat stepped from a high-end Mercedes limo.
“Turn around!” I screamed at the driver.
My ex-vet driver performed an acrobatic U-turn in the middle of the narrow road. That maneuver earned him a tip of every bill in my purse. “Is there a back entrance?”
“Construction road,” he said tersely. “It’s likely to rip out the suspension.”
“Just drop me off near it. I can climb fences.” I emptied my wallet on the front seat. “I don’t have enough in here to buy you a new car.”
He glanced at the cash, then at me in the mirror. “What’s going on out there?”
“I don’t think Arden is running the show anymore.”
Before I could say more, the earth shook and flames shot in the air from along the fence in the field. My driver hit the brake and ducked. “IED,” he shouted with the lungs of experience.
I mentally repeated every curse word I knew—in twelve languages. He wasn’t kidding. Either the truck or the fence had been booby-trapped. As the car stopped, I opened the door and shot out, keeping low.
Insanely, a loudspeaker blared “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Bombs bursting in air was not a peace anthem or even an appropriate metaphor at the moment.
Flames ate at the sky. That was more than an IED. That had been a truck full of explosives. I’d seen them before and had hoped never to see them again. What the hell had Julie got into?
A rusty creak dragged my gaze upward. In the far distance behind the flames revolved the skeletal Ferris wheel, its garish lights blinking weakly against the winter-gray clouds.
In the distance, a police siren finally screamed.
I leaned in the passenger window. “Go find a safe place and have a cup of coffee. The cavalry is on its way.”
“You’re some kind of crazy, lady,” he said in what sounded like approval. “You’re sure? I’ve seen worse in the war. Maybe I should go with you.”
“These are homegrown terrorists. You’ve done your duty for the country. Let the locals handle this one.” I hit the roof of his little car, and heart in throat, trudged into the underbrush around the construction fence—in the direction of the front gate and my family.
If paranoids had planted booby-traps around the perimeter, I didn’t mean to find them by going in the back. I’d rather take on the fur coat lady.
My ride lingered until the driver saw my direction. Then with a wave, he drove sedately away from the park, in the opposite direction of the approaching sirens. Smart man.
I don’t carry guns, but I do carry a few other weapons in the capacious pockets of my army jacket. With Julie and Zander trapped inside the park, presumably surrounded by explosives, arsenals, and terrorists, I had no compunction about using what I had, if necessary.
The whole park puzzle was coming together in my mind. We’d been approaching it from the financial angle, silly us. Crazies may like money, but only because it buys them power. The paranoid like control and require lots and lots of security. Things that go bang in the night apparently let them sleep well. It wasn’t a mindset that I understood, but I’d had lots of experience with the build-a-better-arsenal mentality in my travels.
Paycock, Parker, and Gregory were all gun enthusiasts. A blue collar wife-beater like Gregory fell into my admittedly biased image of the usual AGA supporters. I’d thought wealthy CFO Paycock and Harvard alum Parker’s enthusiasm was all about lobbying the AGA members to support Paul Rose’s candidacy.
I’d forgotten the other end of the stick—they supported Rose because he promised them a gun in every closet. An explosive arsenal in a Jesus theme park carried that capacity one step too far.
As I walked toward the front gate, fur coat lady was nowhere in sight. The driver of her Mercedes was smoking a cigarette. Obviously not a bodyguard, he just watched me trudge in. He may have called a warning on his phone. I wasn’t trying to be invisible.
The sound system now played what sounded like a dirge, presumably for whoever had hit the IED. My heart thudded in dread at the possibility that Julie and Zander had been the ones attempting to break the fence, but I didn’t think so.
The Ferris wheel and sound system actually gave me hope. My family tended toward purposeful, creative lunacy.
I might have short legs, but I walked with fury in my heart. I caught up with fur coat, who was sauntering along with her phone to her ear, giving orders.
“If you killed Reverend Arden, you’re going to fry,” I called after her.
She swung around, phone sti
ll to her ear—Laura Jeffrey, of course. Her pale brown eyebrows raised, and she clicked off her call. “I’m guessing your name is really not Linda,” she said, irrelevantly. “Arden spoke of Magda’s daughter, and I surmise that’s you. Magda warned me to stay away from you, you realize.”
No, I hadn’t realized, and I didn’t much care. “Did she also warn you to stay away from the park? That would have been more sensible.” I didn’t know Laura’s position in all this or her relationship with my mother or Arden, so I was fishing for information.
She didn’t oblige, just shrugged. “Judging by your reaction to my father’s bodyguards at the hospital, you’re as crazy as she is. What do you think you can possibly do to me?”
Arrogance goeth before a fall. Much as I would have loved to discover how Laura knew my mother—they vied for the attention of the same football hero in junior high would be my guess—I had to reach Julie and Zander. Fortunately, I keep my coat loaded with fun and games. I removed the grenade from a utility pocket and said, “Catch!”
I mocked pulling the pin and lobbed the bomb at her. She shrieked hysterically, dropped her phone, and stupidly did just as I’d ordered—tried to catch it.
While her hands were otherwise occupied, I pepper-sprayed her with my Mace squirt gun containing my own unique formula of pepper and perfume. The grenade rolled away as she grabbed at her eyes and screeched in decibels high enough to alert satellites. I was too furious to feel sympathy, even though I had some notion of the pain she suffered. If my theories were anywhere close to correct, she had caused far more pain and suffering than a squirt of high-class pepper.
She dropped to her knees holding her eyes with one hand and groping for her phone with the other.
“You’d be dead by now if I were as cruel as you,” I said conversationally, catching her shoulder with my army boot and shoving her backward. I planted my foot on her middle to hold her down. She flailed frantically, but she couldn’t see what she was doing even if she tried to bite me.
“I’ll sue you for this!” she shouted. Unfortunately, pepper doesn’t stop mouths.
“I’ll make certain Melissa’s family sues you in return,” I said with a verbal shrug, since she couldn’t see me. “What could that poor girl do to you that deserved shooting?”
“She upset Arden!” she spit angrily, wriggling harder now and pushing up. “Between the two of them—” Finally realizing she was talking too much, she shut up. “I didn’t shoot anyone.”
She started wriggling beneath my boot, trying to reach for her coat pocket. What were the odds that she kept a gun in here? I stomped her wrist, probably crushing bones, if her scream was any indication. “If you pull a gun, I have to pull a gun. And then if my sister shows up, she’ll need a gun in case we start shooting. Then the cops show, and they all have even bigger weapons. Guns beget guns. See why it’s best not to carry them?” I leaned over and yanked hers from her pocket, kicking it under a thorny bush.
She grabbed my ankle with her uncrushed hand. I’m sturdy and low to the ground and don’t topple easily. I stomped her again, hopefully cracking a few ribs. She screamed and held my boot. This was one determined lady. Too bad she hadn’t applied that strength to the greater good. Selfishness begets greed which begets evil. Maybe I’d get into this religion thing after all.
I didn’t think I could pry any more out of her, and I was still worried about the twins. I could hear machinery running in the distance.
I breathed a small sigh of relief as two police cars and an ambulance squealed through the gates.
At the arrival of the screaming sirens, the loudspeaker blared a triumphant “We are the Champions.”
Watching her security monitors, Julie saw Ana arrive after the Mercedes lady, and the police racing toward the cave and bulldozer. With reinforcements on the ground, she felt comfortable leaving her post to join Zander at the Ferris wheel. She left the loudspeaker booming, slipped out the back, and drove the little bakkie up the hill to the side field. Parking off the dirt road, she scanned the winter-sparse shrubbery until she spotted her brother knotting an old piece of twine. He was making a sling. Ag man, the boy never grew up.
He twisted the final knot just as she crouched down beside him. “What do you do?” she asked in irritation. “How does this help?”
He nodded at the road. “They only sent one man after me. I took him down with a stone to the back of his head, but that requires being too close. A sling will give me distance and more power if others follow.”
“You knocked a man out?” she asked in incredulity, peering over the bushes. “I see nothing.”
“I tied him up with some wire I found in a pile of construction material. That’s what gave me the idea for the sling.”
“You think quickly under pressure,” Julie said in admiration of her nerdy brother.
He shrugged off the praise. “Look, here comes a truck. Did you see where the police went?” He tested the strength of his rope sling, then picked a rock from a stack to set in the cradle he’d knotted.
“One police car headed toward Lucas. The other is with Ana. She’s standing on some woman bigger than she is.”
Zander raised his eyebrows in surprise, but the big truck barreled closer, erratically careening from side to side.
They ducked down. Not daring to make a sound, Julie texted Ana of their position and asked about Lucas.
The roar of a helicopter overhead drew her attention skyward. Did police send helicopters?
“Gregory’s truck,” she whispered as she recognized the monster white truck approaching up the hill.
Zander nodded his understanding. Gregory had the authority to order the bulldozer to slam into the mountain. It paid to be wary of him.
Gregory’s truck stopped before it reached the Ferris wheel. It looked as if the man behind the wheel was using binoculars to survey his surroundings.
“Looking for snipers maybe,” Zander said with a snort of amusement. “There are only three seats on the wheel. They’d be ideal for peppering the park if I had a rifle.”
Julie didn’t find any of this amusing. She swallowed hard and prayed.
She prayed harder when Gregory climbed out of his truck in camouflage suit and heavy boots, looking like a soldier. He opened the massive tool box in the truck bed and removed something long and dark.
She gasped when he turned around, cradling an assault rifle.
Zander muttered a bad word. “Lay flat. Don’t move.” Frantically, Julie texted a warning to Ana. Perhaps Ana could steer the police here before the madman realized the pretty park ride made an ideal sniper’s nest.
To her surprise, Lucas texted her. Where are you?
Lucas was alive! And out of the cave! Fingers flying, Julie explained their predicament.
Got it. Coming.
She showed the phone to Zander, who just nodded tersely and watched Gregory.
“He’s looking for an offensive position,” Zander whispered as the contractor examined a pile of boulders left from one of the unfinished exhibits. “He has to know the police will see his truck and come looking for him. He wants a fight. Why?”
“Because he is bosbefok? Or just drunk,” Julie suggested. “Lucas can warn the police away, can’t he?” she inquired anxiously, texting the new horror to both Lucas and Ana.
Gregory turned in their direction, and she shut up.
A motorcycle roared up the hill in their direction. Lucas had arrived at the park on a motorcycle.
Julie covered her mouth as Gregory swung to face the road. Zander set his mouth in the grim, stubborn look directly reflecting their father’s fierce warrior heritage.
Gregory aimed his rifle as the motorcycle came closer. Was Lucas suicidal?
The helicopter dropped lower, startling Gregory but not the motorcycle rider. The rifle rattled off gunfire, just as the cycle deliberately veered off the road at a sharp angle.
With Gregory concentrating on the bike, Zander loaded his sling, stood up, and swung
with all the force of his well-trained arm, hitting the gunman on the temple.
Gregory toppled. His rifle shot aimlessly at the sky as he fell.
The helicopter rose and flew away.
I was already trotting toward the Ferris wheel when all hell broke loose. I nearly expired on the spot at the rattle of high-powered weaponry from the hill where Julie and Zander hid. In the distance, from behind Jesus Cave, more explosions lit the sky, and a helicopter zipped in overhead.
I had no doubt that Graham was in the ’copter, directing operations from a visual advantage. I just didn’t know what the devil he was doing because the bull-headed man didn’t communicate. He gave orders, not explanations.
I kept heading toward the twins, even though I had next to no cover. As Maryam had said, this was an excellent field for seeing stars—and anything approaching.
Heart in my throat as the gunfire broke out again, apparently aiming at the helicopter, I dropped to the ground and studied the situation. Julie had said Gregory was up there with an assault rifle, and they were hiding. Who was he shooting at?
The gunfire stopped. A motorcycle started. And the helicopter bobbed, hovered, and flew toward the back of the park. Mission accomplished?
I didn’t know whether to curse Graham or thank him.
A text came through from Julie saying only Hurry.
Trying to breathe a sigh of relief that my siblings were alive, while imagining blood and gore, I trotted up the hill. I didn’t know whether to expect dead bodies, the walking wounded, or Disney fireworks. The Ferris wheel was still running. Half of its brightly colored lights were out and more were blinking erratically. I realized the time had got away from me, and it was late afternoon because the sky behind the lights was almost black. The shortest day of the year had been yesterday.
EG would be home. Mallard would have to look after her.
Twin Genius Page 24