When The Devil Whistles

by Rick Acker

  “What are they doing? Can you see Allie?”

  “I haven’t— Hold on a sec, they’re doing something down there. Okay, now I see something. Six armed men are taking a woman and two guys from one building to another. Looks like Allie, but I can’t be sure. Now they’re inside again.”

  Connor’s pace quickened and sweat began to bead on his forehead despite the cool evening sea breeze. “Was it her? Was she okay?”

  “Couldn’t say for sure. I didn’t get a good look, and they were a long way off.”

  “Any ideas on what to do next? Try the cops maybe?”

  “Didn’t you say Allie already tried them? Besides, what would we say—that we saw a woman who might be Allie and some guys with guns? No violence, no force, no indication that she was bound. Just a woman and some armed men who could be her security guards for all the police know. Sorry, but that’s not going to get them in there.”

  “Well, what would?”

  “Good question. I think we’re on our own tonight.”

  Connor reached his Bentley and got in. “Okay, so what are we going to do?”

  Julian sighed. “Wish I knew, man. Even if the Port cops did want to get involved, I’m not sure they could get into that place. It’s got a better fence around it than most prisons I’ve seen, and I’ll bet they’ve got more firepower in there than just a bunch of M-16s. You’d need a company of Marines. With air support.”

  An idea sparked in Connor’s mind. He ignored it. It burst into flame and he tried to stamp it out. It was crazy, risky, self-destructive—everything he wasn’t. But it would probably work. And if Allie was telling the truth about the North Koreans with nukes—

  “Connor? You there?”

  He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m here. Can you stay where you are for a while?”

  “Sure, as long as you want. Are you coming?”

  “I think so.” He leaned over to the passenger side of his car, found the tracking device under the seat, and tossed it out the window. “But I’ve got a couple things to do first, and a… a decision to make. Just keep your phone on and let me know if anything happens.”

  “Okay.”

  “And pray for me, would you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call you from the road.”

  He put the car in gear and pulled out of the garage, driving as fast as the traffic would allow. He navigated the narrow, clogged streets of San Francisco, the perpetually backed up Bay Bridge, and then I-580 heading east. Finally, the open highway stretched before him and he zoomed along.

  Connor still wasn’t certain what he would do when he reached his destination. However, his uncertainty was melting away fast, much as he wished it wouldn’t. He turned the idea over in his mind, looking for flaws or alternatives. He found neither. There were huge risks—especially for him—but no flaws. It would work, and he couldn’t think of anything else that would.

  Every muscle in his body tensed as the idea bore down on him, becoming relentlessly real in his mind. His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. His stomach tied itself in knots. He sweated. He prayed—silently at first, then aloud. “I’ll do it if you want me to, Lord. I will. It’s just that… well, there’s a good chance I’ll be dead or in prison when this is over. It’s not just me, either. What about my family? What will happen to them when this hits the papers tomorrow?”

  He felt like a soldier with a desk job in headquarters who has just been sent to the front line and told to run across a minefield and take out a machine gun nest on the other side single-handed. It was impossible, unreasonable. “God, is this what you want me to do? Really? Really? ”

  Silence rang in his ears and in his heart.

  He sighed and gave up. The night flowed over him and he felt the Bentley’s understated power purring through the car. His body began to relax. The tension drained out of him and he became philosophical, almost detached.

  For the hundredth time, he remembered his meeting with Allie in the Bahamas. He told her she always had choices, but maybe that wasn’t quite true. Maybe by the time we reach a critical decision, we’ve already made it. Maybe all the little decisions in life are like bricks, and those bricks pile together into walls over time. And when some crisis comes, those walls force us along whatever path we’ve already chosen. Even if that path leads over a cliff.

  That’s how he felt now. He had no choices, just this thing that needed to be done and the knowledge that he needed to do it. The path before him was hard, narrow, and all too clear.

  64

  THE MEN SHOVED ALLIE INTO A METAL CHAIR THAT CHILLED HER WET SKIN through her clothes. They tied her hands behind her. Then they bound her ankles to the legs of the chair. They worked silently and efficiently, as if they’d done this a dozen times before. Maybe they had.

  She was in a machine shop—or at least she hoped that’s what it was. Drills, saws, and other tools hung from the walls or sat on a well-used work table in front of her. Three assault rifles and a box of bullets stood in a corner by the door. Allie forced herself not to wonder why they were there. Naked fluorescent bulbs buzzed overhead, bathing the room in an unnatural white light. The floor was gray concrete, marred by dark splotches around the chair and table.

  Ed and Mitch were there too. They sat against the wall with their hands and feet duct taped together. Guards stood on either side of them.

  The men who had brought her in left and a muscular, heavily tattooed man wearing a ski mask stepped forward out of the shadows. He had plastic gloves on his hands and was playing with a pair of pliers. He grinned and his teeth glinted. “Good evening,” he said in heavily accented English. “It has been long time since I had opportunity to entertain a lady.”

  He stroked her hair and slipped his hand down her neck to her shoulder. His hand was cold and strong. She shuddered and shrank away as far as she could.

  He held up the pliers. “Maybe we do this easy way.” His fingers traced her collarbone, then stopped. He held up the pliers and clicked them together. “Or maybe we do it hard way.” He chuckled in her ear and she could feel his hot breath. “Or maybe we do both. What you think?”

  She wished she could die right then and get it over with. But she couldn’t. All she could do was take whatever this animal wanted to do to her until he killed her. Knowing that gave her a sudden reckless defiance.

  She turned and spat, hitting him right in the left eye.

  He jerked his head back and shouted in a foreign language. Then he backhanded her so hard that the chair fell over. Her skull crashed into the concrete floor and she saw black spots. Her head rang like the inside of a bell and the room swam.

  “Hey, don’t you want to know what I think?” Ed’s voice called out, cutting through the fog in her mind. “I think you’d scream like a little girl if I ever got hold of you.”

  The masked man roared with laughter. “Your turn comes, brave boy. Now you watch. Maybe you not so brave when you sit in chair.”

  He bent over Allie and grabbed her shirt.

  A staccato male voice spoke from somewhere nearby, issuing what sounded like a command, though she didn’t understand the language.

  Her tormenter turned his head and answered over his shoulder.

  Another peremptory statement from the unseen speaker.

  The torturer grunted. Then he reluctantly released Allie’s shirt and picked up the chair and her, setting them upright as easily as if the seat had been empty.

  He walked over to the table and Allie got a look at the man whose voice she had heard. The second man was Asian, in his mid-thirties, and had sharp features made sharper by a look of disapproval.

  The man in the ski mask returned carrying a syringe. He grabbed Allie’s arm and jabbed the needle into a blood vessel inside her elbow. It hurt and a drop of blood ran down her arm after he pulled the needle out, but the pain was distant and somehow disconnected from her, as if she was remembering it.

  Within seconds, she felt the drug. Her
brain, already dulled by blows from the torturer’s fist and the floor, lost focus. Her thoughts wandered away from each other and she could not gather them back. She wished Connor would rescue her, but he hated her. She wished her father were there, then remembered he was dead. She was so alone. Her chin dropped down to her chest and she nearly started crying.

  “Allison Whitman, why did you come here?” asked an authoritative voice.

  She felt an instant urge to answer, and the words spilled out of her before she knew it. “To see what was going on, what you were doing.”

  “What did you think was going on?”

  “I didn’t know. That’s why I came.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one.”

  “Did Devil to Pay, Inc. send you?”

  Warning bells went off and she knew she needed to be careful, but she couldn’t quite remember how or why. She looked down and said nothing.

  She heard a sigh, followed by footsteps. A hand grabbed her chin and jerked her head up, making the room spin. The second man’s face filled her vision. He stared down at her with hard black eyes. “Allison, we know about Connor Norman and Clayton Investigations. Did they send you?”

  She clenched her jaws together and said nothing. She knew that answering his questions would mean betraying Connor, and she would not do that. Not again.

  Without the slightest change in his expression, he slapped her across the mouth. “Did they send you?”

  She tasted blood, but kept her mouth shut. Looking into his eyes, she knew all at once that he couldn’t make her talk. Neither could his friend in the mask. They might be able to make her scream, but that was all. Something had clicked into place deep inside her, something strong.

  She might die in that chair, but she would not break. She knew it. She smiled, and he knew it too.

  He let go of her chin and walked away. He nodded toward the masked man as he went. The two men talked in a foreign language again. Then the second man walked out.

  As soon as he was gone, the torturer looked at her with a gleam in his masked eyes and started walking toward her. He flexed his arms, making his tattoos come alive.

  As he approached her, she heard a buzzing sound. It started faintly, like a fly trapped in her skull. But it grew louder fast, and in a few seconds it was an overwhelming roar. At first, she thought the noise was inside her head, but everyone in the room suddenly started shouting. The tattooed torturer seemed to forget about her. He grabbed a rifle and dashed outside.

  The roar rose to teeth-rattling volume. Then a high jack-hammer sound started. Something exploded outside, and the shock wave buckled in one of the walls and peeled the roof back like the lid of a can of sardines.

  Allie looked up just as something flashed across the night sky. It looked like a winged shark made of polished steel.

  Then the wall collapsed and the building came down on top of her.

  65

  THE DOCKS VANISHED BEHIND CONNOR, AND HE WAS FLYING OVER THE black waters of the San Francisco Bay. He pulled back on the stick, climbing and banking to the right.

  His mind hummed with adrenaline and his hand shook on the stick. Part of him could not comprehend that he was actually doing this. It looked and felt just like another movie shoot. But those were real bullets in his guns this time, not blanks. Those were real buildings and ships and men down there, and he had just fired hundreds of rounds at them.

  He looked back over his right shoulder at the Deep Seven compound. A black and red mushroom cloud rose from the remains of a gas or propane tank. The building closest to it was a collapsed ruin, and another building appeared to have lost a wall and part of its roof. Tiny figures ran aimlessly or pointed after him. None of them appeared to be hurt or dead. Good.

  He was trying to disrupt whatever was going on down there and bring in the Port police—or better yet, the military. Shooting people—even bad people—was something he really wanted to keep to a minimum.

  Air traffic control had been jabbering on his radio for the past several minutes. Time to bring them into the loop. “Oakland Center, this is November-one-niner-six-six-November. I am observing violent activity on a dock in the Port of Oakland. I am attempting to disrupt it. Please contact Port police, Coast Guard, and all other appropriate authorities immediately.”

  “Six-Six-November, turn right toward San Francisco Bay, bearing due west and climb and maintain five thousand feet. You will be intercepted by an Air Force F-16. Acknowledge.”

  “Not until I see Port cops on the ground. I have a friend down there, and I’m not leaving her.”

  “Six-six-November, there are F-16s inbound. If you do not leave the area immediately, you risk being shot down.”

  “Get some cops on that dock and I’ll leave. Six-six-November out.”

  Connor clicked off the radio and turned to his Bluetooth headset. “How’s it looking? What’s going on down there?”

  “Tough to tell,” Julian’s voice said in his ear. The volume on the earpiece was up as high as it would go, but the cockpit noise still almost drowned him out. “There’s a lot of smoke and one of those buildings just came down.”

  “Which one was Allie in?”

  Pause. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  A sick feeling welled up in him. “No, you’re not.”

  “Don’t think about it. Look, the best thing you can do for her right now is to get the cops in there. Focus, buddy. You need to focus.”

  Was Allie okay? The question burned in his mind, but he knew Julian was right. Worrying couldn’t save her, but it could kill him. He said a quick prayer and then did his best to push thoughts of her away.

  He leveled out the White Knight and swallowed hard. “Okay, I’m going in for another pass. “What do I hit?”

  “There’s a lot of activity around a semi. See it?”

  Connor looked down. He saw a large unmarked white semi parked in the shadows between the ship’s gangway and a large warehouse. Men scurried around it even as it began to roll forward.

  “I see it. Whatever’s in there must be pretty important for them to try moving it right now.” He nosed the P-51 down into a power dive. The night air roared over the old fighter’s wings and the ground rushed up at him.

  Men raced for cover as the plane approached. When he was about three hundred yards out, he noticed strobe-like flashes from the corners of buildings. A chill went through him as he realized they were shooting at him. Bangs and pings rattled through the plane as some of the bullets found their mark. He was very glad that he had left most of the plane’s original battle armor in place—particularly the steel plates and bullet-resistant canopy protecting the pilot.

  Connor let loose a burst from the six .50-caliber machine guns in the wings. Dust and debris flew into the air as the massive bullets hit the ground, digging furrows in the asphalt and cement toward the semi’s tractor. Men dove out of the truck, leaving it to roll forward on its own.

  The stream of fire chewed into the cab. It didn’t burst into a fireball the way vehicles did when Connor “shot” them on movie sets. Still, he was pretty sure he was hitting it.

  Then he was past the truck. The dock flew by in a flash and he was over the water again. He pulled the plane up again, but it was sluggish and shook. He’d probably taken hits to his flight control surfaces. He looked to the right and left out of the Plexiglas bubble canopy, but he couldn’t see his wings clearly in the dark. Hopefully the damage wasn’t too bad.

  He made a wide turn to the right, staying well out of range from the dock. “Did I get it?”

  Julian whistled. “Oh, yeah. It’s smoking, and it looks like Swiss cheese. They’re not driving that thing anywhere.”

  “Any sign of cops yet?”

  “Nope, but it’s only been about five minutes.”

  “Really?” He let out a shaky laugh. “It feels like I’ve been up here for half an hour.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m going in for another pass. No target this time—I’ll just b
uzz them.”

  He dove into the hornets’ nest again, flying low and fast to make himself as hard to hit as possible. The ground fire started well before he was in range and there was more of it this time. The entire dock area sparkled with flashes like a stadium during the opening kickoff for a Super Bowl.

  But the White Knight was going over 400 miles an hour— far too fast for an inexperienced marksman to hit from more than point-blank range. Bullets fired at the plane’s nose would pass harmlessly behind its tail. To actually hit it, they would have to aim well in front of the aircraft—a skill few modern soldiers learned. He didn’t hear any bullets hitting his plane.