Dangerous Minds

by Janet Evanovich

  Riley rolled her eyes. “That’s a relief. I was afraid we’d be doing something dangerous.”

  “Be careful,” Vernon said. “Pay attention to your unagi.”

  The three of them took off down the Jeep trail and disappeared into the fog. Riley and Emerson buckled in and waited.

  “The dogs won’t chase the fox unless they are allowed to pick up its trail,” Emerson said.

  Riley cut her eyes to Emerson. “Have you ever been to a fox hunt? Nine times out of ten it ends up badly for the fox.”

  Four sets of headlights shone through the cloud cover, and seconds later Riley could make out four ATVs loaded to the gills with Rough Rider soldiers.

  “Do you know how to drive one of these things off-road?” Emerson asked.

  “I’m the daughter of a small-town Texas sheriff, and I have four brothers,” Riley said. “What do you think?”

  She gunned the engine and took off down the mountain, fishtailing through the lava cinders before getting her bearings.

  Emerson looked behind them. The four sets of headlights were still in pursuit.

  “They took the bait,” Emerson said. “The good news is that they’re coming after us. The bad news is that they appear to be gaining on us.”

  Riley checked the speedometer. “We’re going forty miles per hour. I’m driving blind in this fog. Any faster, and I’m afraid we’ll lose control of the ATV.”

  “If you don’t, Tin Man will catch us.”

  “I see your point,” Riley said. She pressed on the accelerator and the ATV surged forward, bumping over the rough terrain.

  The wheels of the ATV lifted off the ground as they launched off a knoll and were airborne for several seconds. They hit the ground hard and Emerson blew a weeeoop on his slide whistle.

  “For the love of Mike,” Riley said, reaching across, ripping the whistle from Emerson’s hand, and throwing it out of the ATV.

  Emerson watched the whistle bounce on the ground and out of sight. “That’s a shame. I was really beginning to get good on that thing. Another year of practice and I think I would have been ready for what we in the slide whistle game refer to as ‘The Show.’ ”

  “ ‘The Show’?”

  “You know. Playing the ‘bankrupt’ sound effect for Wheel of Fortune. The guy who has that job is just living the dream.”

  The ATV burst out of the cloud cover, and Riley could see the Pacific Ocean far in the distance. “How far from civilization are we?”

  “It’s about fifteen miles until we get to the Hawaii Belt Road,” Emerson said.

  Riley looked down at the speedometer. It read sixty miles per hour. “At this speed, that’s fifteen minutes. Maybe we can stay ahead of them that long.”

  The four pursuing ATVs emerged from the cloud cover, and Emerson turned to look.

  “It’s Tin Man and about a dozen goons wearing khaki uniforms and campaign hats,” Emerson said. “They’re maybe a hundred yards behind us.”

  Riley applied more pressure to the gas pedal, and the ATV leaped forward. They could see green pastures in the distance at the lower elevations, and the cinders lining the ground were starting to give way to scrubby grasses.

  “I have my foot all the way to the floor,” Riley said. “We can’t go any faster.”

  The pursuing ATVs were keeping pace, but they weren’t closing the gap.

  “It looks like they’re at maximum speed too,” Emerson said.

  Riley passed a rusty, tarnished metal tube with fins on one end. “Um. What was that?”

  Moments later there was the sound of a tremendous boom, and one of the pursuing ATVs was catapulted at least thirty feet into the air before crashing to the ground and exploding into flames.

  “I have good news and bad news,” Emerson said. “The good news is that there are only three ATVs and nine Rough Riders chasing us now.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “I think we’re passing through an artillery dump. The rusty metal tubes stuck into the ground all around us look to me like unexploded shells.”

  Riley swerved, narrowly missing one.

  “There’s one dead ahead,” Emerson said.

  The ATV was going too fast to steer around it without rolling the vehicle and killing them both.

  “Hold on,” Riley said, launching the ATV over a hillock and flying over the shell before landing roughly on the other side of it.

  “This is nice,” Emerson said after they’d passed completely through the dump. “We’ve been on the island for less than twenty-four hours and already we’ve seen so many off-the-beaten-path things most tourists don’t even know about.”

  Riley glanced behind her. The pursuing ATVs had made it through and were still a football field’s distance away.

  “We could have died,” Riley said. “That’s not nice.”

  “Do not dwell in the past,” Emerson said. “Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

  “Buddha?”

  Emerson shook his head. “Fence.”

  “Who’s Fence?”

  Emerson pointed at the green pasture ahead. There was a barbed wire fence strung across their path, stretching on for miles in either direction.

  There was nowhere to go but through. “Ramming speed,” Riley shouted, slamming into the barbed wire at seventy-five miles per hour. The fence strained for a moment and snapped as the ATV plowed through.

  “More good news,” Emerson said. “We must be off the Pohakuloa Training Grounds and onto private property.”

  Riley squinted into the distance. “What’s that sea of black ahead of us?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Emerson said.

  “I really, really do.”

  “We’re on one of the biggest privately owned ranches in the state,” Emerson said.

  “Crap on a cracker. They’re cows. There must be a thousand of them.”

  “Black Angus,” Emerson said. “They’re the Cadillac of cows.”

  “Good to know. Are they dangerous?”

  “I wouldn’t run into one at seventy miles per hour. They weigh up to two thousand pounds. It would be like smashing into a brick wall. We should be fine as long as you don’t excite them.”

  “Hello. I’m driving an ATV at seventy miles per hour right through their herd. I think they’re going to get excited.”

  Emerson gripped the side door of the ATV. “Yes. That might complicate things,” he said as Riley weaved around the first of the cows.

  Startled cows snapped to attention as the other three ATVs invaded the herd as well. In a moment, the docile mass of cows was transformed into an angry sea of black, thundering down the mountain, together with the unwelcome ATVs.

  “Ten years from now this will be an amusing anecdote,” Emerson said. “You don’t get to be a part of a stampede every day.”

  Riley looked around her. All she could see was a swirling vortex of two-thousand-pound cows.

  “This is even worse than the artillery dump,” she said. “At least the shells didn’t move.”

  Emerson looked around. “Did you know the average cow produces 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime? The highest lifetime yield of milk for a single cow, named Smurf, was 478,163 pounds.”

  “That’s really fascinating, but I’m sort of trying to concentrate on not getting us killed right now.”

  Emerson was silent. He squirmed in his seat a little.

  “You’re dying to tell me more about cows, aren’t you,” Riley said.

  “A dairy cow makes 125 pounds of saliva every day,” Emerson blurted out in one breath. “I have more fun facts about cows, but I suppose we can discuss them later.”

  One of the pursuing ATVs swerved hard right to avoid a cow, and the driver lost control, the ATV rolling several times and launching himself and the two other passengers through the air.

  “One more ATV down. Only two left,” Emerson said. He watched the three soldiers scramble to their feet. “Looks like they
’re okay.”

  A mass of stampeding cows collided with the three men, knocking them down and trampling them before continuing to run down the mountain.

  “Whoops,” Emerson said. “They might not be so okay anymore.”

  Riley worked her way to the front of the herd and sped down the hill. The ATV containing Tin Man and one other were still behind them.

  “I see a road,” Riley said.

  Emerson looked. “I think it’s the Old Mamalahoa Highway. There’s nothing in the area but uninhabited cattle ranches. Just cross the road and keep going.”

  A couple minutes later, Riley burst through another barbed wire fence and launched the ATV across the Old Highway. Emerson was right. Just more pasture on the other side, but at least it wasn’t as steep as the upper slopes.

  “Are they still there?” Riley asked. A bullet whizzed by Riley’s head. “I guess that answers my question. I thought they were afraid of hitting the Penning trap.”

  “Something tells me Tin Man doesn’t care too much. He’s flat-out crazy.”

  Riley passed through a grove of trees and exploded across Hawaii Belt Road, barely missing an eighteen-wheeler. Across the road, the landscape was more lush and lightly forested.

  “This is good,” Emerson said. “We may be able to lose them in the trees. Just keep going and look for an opportunity.”

  Riley dodged the trees and entered a meadow covered in tall guinea grass.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Riley said.

  “Neither can they.”

  Seconds later, the ATV rocketed out of the guinea grass and Riley slammed on the brakes. The ATV fishtailed and rolled over several times, coming to a stop at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff overlooking a green rain forest in the valley below.

  Riley unbuckled herself from the ATV and struggled out and over to Emerson. He had blood on his forehead and was still dazed from the impact. She unbuckled him and dragged him out of the ATV.

  “Emerson, are you okay?”

  “Cows can walk upstairs but not downstairs because their knees don’t bend that way,” Emerson said.

  Riley smiled. “You’re fine.”

  She looked up and saw Tin Man and six armed Rough Riders standing over her.

  “You won’t stay that way for long unless I get back what you stole,” Tin Man said. “It’s not in the ATV, and I’m assuming it’s not at the bottom of the cliff, or there’d be no more cliff by now.”

  Tin Man grabbed Riley and put a gun to her head. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll shoot her.”

  “If I tell you, you’ll shoot her. Then you’ll kill me too,” Emerson said. “And, if you do shoot her, I’ll never tell you anything. That’s a promise.”

  Tin Man held tight to Riley but lowered the gun. “What do you suggest?”

  “Let her go and keep me as a hostage. She’ll get the Penning trap and we can arrange a swap. Me for the trap.”

  “I have a better idea,” Tin Man said. “I keep the redhead and you get the trap and bring it to me. And if you break our agreement, I’ll hurt her and then I’ll kill her. That’s my promise.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Riley looked out the window of the SUV as they drove south along the Hawaii Belt Road toward Captain Cook. She was sandwiched in the middle of the back seat between Tin Man and a hulking Rough Rider. Bart Young was in the front.

  “We’re not going back to Mauna Kea?” Riley asked.

  “No,” Bart Young said. “That location is obviously compromised. Everything of value, including you, is being moved to our other base of operations in Kilauea.”

  Riley thought it probably wasn’t a good sign that they hadn’t blindfolded her and were taking no precautions to hide the new location from her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked the director.

  “Are you familiar with the writings of Machiavelli?”

  “Wasn’t he the sixteenth-century philosopher who thought it is better to be feared than loved?”

  “That’s part of his writings. Taken as a whole, they were a guidebook for how to rule. He believed that a prince who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”

  “And you fancy yourself a prince?”

  “Why not? For a century, my predecessors have been protecting a secret that they never truly understood. Yes, they knew it was a destructive force the likes of which the world has never seen. But I alone saw its potential. I alone set about to harvest and refine it into a weapon. With it, I can obliterate whole nations in the blink of an eye. Who would dare to stand in my way?”

  “How many innocent people have died because of your quest for power?” Riley asked.

  Bart Young shrugged. “Immaterial. A prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how to be ruthless, and to use that knowledge as necessity requires.”

  “You’re no prince,” Riley said. “You’re just a thug in a thousand-dollar suit.”

  “Time will tell. Was Napoleon a thug? Was Alexander the Great? Was Genghis Khan?”

  “Yeah,” Riley said. “Those guys were thugs.”

  Bart Young shook his head. “You’re not seeing the big picture. The winners write the history books. Only two things stand in my way. Emerson Knight and the Penning trap he stole.”

  “Why?” Riley asked.

  “That particular trap contains a little more than a third of my supply of strange matter, and I need it to complete Armageddon.”

  Riley leaned forward. “ ‘Armageddon’?”

  “The weapon my troops will carry into battle.”

  “You don’t have enough from your other collection sites?” Riley asked.

  “In microscopic quantities, it isn’t stable enough to do any significant damage. The larger the mass of strange matter, the more stable it becomes.”

  “How much do you need?”

  The director turned around in his seat and stared directly at Riley. “If I want to conquer the world, I need enough to instill fear in every man, woman, and child. I need the ability to threaten the planet Earth with annihilation. Unfortunately, without that Penning trap, I barely have enough to destroy North America.”

  “Right,” Riley said. “That would be unfortunate if you couldn’t destroy the entire world.”

  Riley sat in silence as the SUV drove around South Point and continued north on Highway 11 toward the Kilauea Crater. Riley stayed alert as they entered Volcanoes National Park. Vast fields of jagged lava ran from the road down to the ocean, ten miles away. The SUV drove past the turnoff to the visitor center and continued on along Highway 11, out of the park and toward the little town of Volcano.

  “I thought we were heading to Kilauea,” Riley said.

  “We are, and we aren’t,” Bart Young said, smiling. “It’s nice to know there are still some secrets that we’ve managed to hide from you and Knight. I just might keep you around for a while. Where we’re going, nobody will ever find you.”

  —

  “How the Sam Hill are we going to find her?” Vernon asked.

  Emerson was pacing in his living room. He’d phoned Alani minutes after Riley was kidnapped and told her to bring everyone to the ranch. They now had the task of rescuing Riley without sacrificing the Penning trap.

  “Tin Man won’t try to arrange an exchange until morning. That gives us twelve hours,” Emerson said.

  Alani leaned forward in her chair. “We have absolutely no idea where they took her. Hawaii might be an island, but it’s a really big island.”

  “Well, we can’t give up the Whatsamadoodle either,” Vernon said. “I don’t like the idea of handing over a doomsday machine to those maniacs.”

  “We have it stashed away in the storage locker at the Keck Observatory,” Alani said. “It’s hooked up to power and there are two backup generators, so it should be safe. I told my assistant it was part of an experiment I was conducting and not to touch it but to call if there were any problems.”

  Emerson g
ot out a map of the Big Island. “Every riddle has an answer. It’s somewhere here on this map.”

  “Mauna Kea?” Alani asked.

  Emerson shook his head. “No. I’m certain that by now they’ve already disassembled the lab, moved everything, and sealed off the entrance to the lava tube.”

  Wayan Bagus studied the map. “Do not seek answers but seek instead to understand the question.”

  “There you go talking in riddles again,” Vernon said.

  Wayan Bagus shrugged. “Would you search for a branch taken by a river? Instead, ask yourself what is the nature of the river. Everything on earth seeks its proper place.”

  “If I were them my proper place would be somewhere I felt in control,” Emerson said. “Somewhere that I felt comfortable.” He pointed at the map. “Like Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It’s part of their system.”

  “Volcanoes National Park is huge,” Alani said.

  “The woman we rescued from the lava tube on Mauna Kea said she was taken from a cave on Kilauea,” Emerson said. “Are there any restricted areas there?”

  “There are some restricted areas near the active vents, but they’re not big enough to hide a research facility. And they’re so dangerous that nobody, not even Tin Man and Bart Young, would go there.”

  Emerson returned to the map. “There’s a little square piece of land on the map that isn’t contiguous to the rest of the park. It looks out of place.”

  “That’s Ola’a Forest,” Alani said. “It’s a crazy dense jungle. Hardly anybody ever goes there.”

  Emerson tapped on the map. “There’s got to be a reason why the NPS annexed this little unrelated property into the park. How big is Ola’a?”

  “Nine thousand acres, more or less,” Alani said.

  Emerson smiled. “It’s the perfect place to hide a government compound. I think I know where we can find Riley.”

  “We can’t search eighteen square miles of rain forest in twelve hours in the dark,” Vernon said.

  “We don’t have to,” Emerson said. “They used the lava tubes at Mauna Kea to make a hidden base. It stands to reason they did the same at Ola’a.”

  Alani’s eyes widened. “The Kazumura.”