Deadly Odds

by Allen Wyler

  Of?

  Fire!

  Instinctively, he rolled to his right, freeing his pinned left leg from under him, sending a bolt of pain up his thigh and body, his right arm still tightly tethered to the heavy oak desk. He tried to jerk his hand free but the metal cut further into skin.

  Fucking handcuffs.

  Suddenly he realized what had happened: the computer room had exploded as planned. He’d survived. But now he was trapped in an inferno, handcuffed to an immovable oak desk. Again, he tried to push up the corner of the desk with his back. No go.

  Think!

  Well, dude, if you can’t slip the cuffs, unlock them…

  Yeah, great. How?

  The heat from the crackling, raging fire was growing more intense with each passing second. Already he could feel flames singeing his skin.

  He remembered leaving a fork on the desk yesterday when he was eating pizza. Had it moved? If so, where was it now? The smoke was too thick to see a damned thing, leaving him so disoriented he didn’t know how far the desk had moved—or even if it had moved at all—in the explosion. He started groping at his surroundings like a blind man, hoping for some sense of orientation. He found the corner of the desk and gingerly explored the hot top with his fingertips. Nothing remotely familiar remained there, probably having been thrown somewhere by the blast.

  Soaked with sweat, clothes and soot clinging to him, he was verging on panic. Panic and you die.

  True, but I might die anyway.

  Think!

  He let loose with a hoarse, chest-heaving cough, and, without thinking, inhaled another lung-full of smoke. Which triggered another time-consuming bout of coughing, doubling him over in a wheezing mass tethered to an anchor.

  Coughing fit subsiding, he struggled up into a kneeling position, and in doing so, his fingers brushed something. Blindly, reflexively, he groped for it, found it and immediately identified it. The fork.

  Aw, man, there must be a God!

  He remembered reading that all handcuffs share a common locking mechanism that requires only one simple common key. Thereby making it seamless for various law enforcement agencies to hand off and transport prisoners without having to worry about keeping track of the keys. This, in turn, meant the locks were easily picked with a rudimentary instrument such as a bent tine. Exactly one of the reason prisoners were not allowed metal forks.

  Working totally by feel now, ignoring the burning heat, he bent one of the three tines to a right angle from the others. Then, with the help of the desk leg against the edge of his cell-phone, he bent a quarter inch of the tip as close to a right angle as possible without hurting his finger. Still using only touch—the smoke too thick to see at all now—he wiggled the bent tip into the key slot and rotated the fork until he felt resistance. Applying steadily increasing pressure and a prayer, he rotated the fork counter-clockwise until he felt the lock release. The handcuff fell apart, freeing his wrist.

  Okay, now how the hell do I get out?

  With the smoke so thick, he couldn’t see the doorway to the hall, and the desk wasn’t a very accurate landmark because it had been moved in the explosion. He simply started crawling away from the flame, feeling his way, remembering something from the distant past about staying low as possible in a burning building because that’s where the smoke is less dense and oxygen more plentiful. With the hot floor burning his hands, he continued crawling until he felt the door jamb. At the same time he heard what sounded like a blood-curdling scream over the roar of the fire.

  Karim?

  Can’t be. Bastard has to be dead!

  He paused long enough to listen again. Now he heard metallic banging, like someone pounding against a furnace air duct.

  Ignoring the sound, he resumed crawling, left hand feeling his way, using the hot peeling molding between floor and wall as his only guide. His stinging eyes were now completely dry, making it painful to blink.

  The bathroom. Get to the bathroom. With the backdoor locked and the key gone, his present route was impossible.

  A bout of wracking coughs doubled him up again, his throat and sinuses so clogged with gritty irritating soot each breath seem more and more impossible.

  Move!

  A crash thundered above the roaring crackling fire. Arnold glanced right, just as the floor and wall between the hall and the living room caved in, opening a gaping hole into the basement, providing a direct path for fire to roar ferociously upward. The heat intensified, but the flames provided slight flickering light.

  Shit, sure this isn’t Hell?

  Then he reached the bathroom door, shoved it open, crawled inside, kicked it shut. At least in this room the smoke wasn’t so thick, allowing him to see dim light through the window. Break the glass.

  How?

  To his left was a linen closet. Struggling to his feet, he opened the door, grabbed a bath towel, wrapped it around his hand for insulation, and then locked the door. If Karim tries to get in here, the door should stop him. At least for a second or two. If he had survived the blast. Couldn’t possibly still be out there. Could he?

  He grabbed two more bath towels, wrapped them around the first one, making his right hand a large bundle, moved to the window and rammed his fist straight through the center of the pane, shattering it, leaving jagged shards protruding from the frame like shark’s teeth. Quickly as possible, he knocked out as many jagged shards as he could from the bottom and sides of the frame, deciding there wasn’t enough time to even bother with the top ones, that cutting his back was the least of his worries. Then he was back at the linen closet grabbing the two remaining towels just as a horrendous thump cracked the center of the bathroom door.

  Shit! Can that be? Bastard should be dead.

  Back at the window, he layered the towels over the bottom edge of the sill as fast as he could without dropping them. Then climbed onto the toilet, grabbed the sides of the frame, and was thrusting his left leg through the opening as another horrendous crash splintered out the center of the door. Arnold glanced over his shoulder long enough to see Karim’s face, most of the skin burnt completely off, exposing bone, his hair singed to crisp scalp. The monster was pushing through the opening with inhuman strength, gasping and coughing for air. The big man threw his shoulder into the remaining door panel, smashing it to splinters, letting him in.

  Holding both sides of the window frame, Arnold climbed on the sill and jumped. He slammed into earth with a jaw-popping impact. Then was up, running along the garage to the high cedar fence. He reached the door and opened it, spun around for one last look. Karim stood inside the broken window screaming, the fire silhouetting his huge body just behind the window frame, the bastard too big to squeeze through the narrow opening.

  Arnold stopped to stare, overwhelmed with a strange mix of horror and sympathy for the way the terrorist was about die. He wanted to yell back, to apologize for the way his life was about to end, to explain that all he really wanted was to free himself and seek revenge for Howie, that he never intend his death to be so horrid. Instead, he raised a fist and yelled, “For all of us, you sonofabitch!”

  A second explosion shook the evening air, shooting a fireball through the open bathroom window, swallowing the terrorist. Next came the crash of an internal wall collapsing, burying Karim in the conflagration.

  Arnold stepped through the gate into the alley and began jogging toward Greenlake as the wail of approaching sirens competed with the roar of the fully engulfed house fire, the alley now thick with the cloying acrid stench of burning plastics and household goods.

  39.

  One week later, Davidson’s private line rang in his office. The lawyer glanced at the caller ID and saw it was Fisher calling, so carefully placed his Mont Blanc on the desk and punched the call into speaker phone. “Davidson.”

  “Palmer, Gary Fisher. How you doing?”

  Davidson knew the FBI agent wasn’t calling simply for a health update and hoped he would provide an update on the investigation. “Up to
my ass in alligators at the moment. What’s up? Any word?”

  “Matter of fact, good news. Word just came down the chain of command that a SEAL team took out the Jahandars’ mother ship, lock, stock, and barrel. Gold’s GPS coordinates were perfect. Never would’ve gotten those bastards without it. We also nailed the two operatives who were setting up the bomb for the Vegas convention. So all in all, it was a clean sweep.”

  Davidson felt a rush of elation. But that was immediately supplanted by sadness that Arnold Gold would never know the good he had accomplished, would never receive the thanks he deserved. “And Firouz?”

  “The New York police nailed him in downtown Manhattan when he was walked out of Grand Central and tried to hail a cab to Kennedy airport. He had a one-way ticket to Karachi via London. Would’ve made it, too, if it hadn’t been for a sharp transit cop who recognized him. Lucky.”

  Davidson nodded appreciatively and peered out the window at the business district. “That leaves Breeze. Any news?”

  “That’s the bad news. She’s in the wind.”

  “Shame.”

  “Yes it is. But all things considered, it worked out well, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Not really. A really fine young man died in the process. Guy was a genius with artificial intelligence. A real genius. Your interactions with him were quite different than mine, so you may not appreciate his qualities the same way I do.”

  “Point made. Still, he did an incredible job. I applaud him. By the way, you happen to know if the fire department ever found the bodies? I haven’t had time to check.”

  “Not really. Talked to Detective Elliott yesterday. She just received the official report from SFD. Seems the house was completely destroyed. By the time the fire department arrived on scene it was all they could do to keep the neighbors’ places from going up, too. But they did find DNA evidence that Karim was incinerated.”

  “All right, then. Anything else I can tell you?”

  Davidson hung up the phone and sat back in the chair, letting his gaze travel up Second Avenue, thinking how unjust life can be. The sun was beginning to set behind the Olympics, yet he still had a pile of work to complete. But now his attention was elsewhere. Go get a latte and bring it back up to the office? Might as well, it would be a long night. With a weary sigh, Davidson pushed out of his chair and headed for the elevator.

  As Davidson enters Starbucks, a man and a woman walk through the front door of a single-story house perched on an ancient lava flow.

  “I brought the papers.” The slender, long-haired woman leads Arnold across the granite foyer, the scrape of her sandals echoing off bare walls, down three shallow steps to an expansive room of floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass walls. Her right hand holds a thin leather portfolio. With her free hand she effortlessly slides open one of the glass panels onto a wide deck. Warm humid air wafts in with the scent of salt water and bougainvilleas. Sunlight sparkles off distant water, a warm glowing ball high overhead.

  He follows her down the granite steps and across the great room onto the balcony with a solid railing of tempered glass that Davidson would approve of. For a moment he stands gazing out at Diamond Head far off to the left, the city skyline directly ahead, Pearl Harbor in the distance. He inhales warm balmy air deeply, his lungs still purging smoke particles. He imagines, like a cigarette smoker, his lungs will harbor permanent stains. But each day brings healing, and soon he might not cough so much.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” She says. She’s tall and thin. Maybe Japanese or a mixture of Polynesian, Caucasian, and Japanese. Can’t tell for sure. Long black hair flows over the shoulders of her brightly colored floral dress.

  “Yes, it is.”

  She turns to face him. “We can sign the papers in the kitchen, if you wish.”

  He nods, thinking of the furniture he needs to buy and the work that reconstructing his artificial intelligence system will require over the next months. He’ll need to purchase a shitload of computer gear. And that’s when he realizes his gut no longer aches.

  When was the last time I felt it? When was my last Maalox?

  Funny how we notice the appearance of things more acutely than their disappearance.

  It saddens him to know he’ll never see Rachael. He’ll never know if things might’ve worked out between them, but no one from his past—not even Davidson or Fisher—must ever know he didn’t die in the fire as had been reported in the Seattle Times.

  “I can’t tell you how lucky you are to be able to get this piece of property. Primo, really prime.”

  He follows her back inside, into the kitchen area, and watches her set the portfolio on the granite counter, open it, remove a stack of papers and a pen. A black and white Mont Blanc, like Davidson’s.

  “We could do this at the office, if you’d prefer.”

  “No, this will be fine.” From the attaché case he’s brought, he removes a small, silver frame with a picture of a woman and sets it beside the papers.

  “Your wife?” the agent asks, sounding a bit surprised.

  “No, just a friend from the past.” He looks at the picture of Rachael and smiles. “We can get on with it now.”

  She hesitates, the papers held with both hands, inspecting him again. “Sorry if this is too personal—and if so, no need to answer—but I can’t help ask, what with you being so young to afford a house in this price range, I mean… Oh, and may I call you Trevor instead of Mr. Taylor?”

  He smiles and nods. “And your question?”

  “May I ask what you do for a living? You’re not a trust fund brat, are you?”

  The question triggers an eerie memory of a night in Vegas, of sitting at the table in a restaurant, of the start of everything bad. He smiles. “How did you guess?”

  About

  the Author

  photo credit:

  Yeun Lui Studios

  Allen Wyler is a renowned neurosurgeon who earned an international reputation for pioneering surgical techniques to record brain activity. He has served on the faculties of both the University of Washington and the University of Tennessee, and in 1992 was recruited by the prestigious Swedish Medical Center to develop a neuroscience institute.

  In 2002, he left active practice to become Medical Director for a startup medical device company (that went public in 2006) and he now chairs the Institutional Review Board of a major medical center in the Pacific Northwest.

  Leveraging a love for thrillers since the early seventies, Wyler devoted himself to fiction writing in earnest, eventually serving as a Vice President of the International Thriller Writers organization for several years. After publishing his first two medical thrillers, Deadly Errors (2005) and Dead Head (2007), he officially retired from medicine to devote himself to writing full time.

  He and his wife live in downtown Seattle.

  Visit Allen Wyler@

  www.allenwyler.com

  Other Bestselling Titles By Allen Wyler and published by Astor + Blue Editions

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  With the CIA and Seattle PD closing in, McCarthy unwittingly pulls Dr. Sarah Hamilton into the fray. And like rats in a maze, they struggle to stay one step ahead of their deadly hunters, while simultaneously uncovering a trail of corruption that reaches shocking dimensions.

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