by Jon Land
“Go to it, fellas,” he said as they began to roar.
Chapter 25
THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE of the lions outdoors changed everything. Blaine emerged from the big top and saw two of the remaining trucks crash head-on, the drivers’ attention diverted by the sight of the great beasts loping across the fair grounds. The gunmen, trying to protect themselves against the lions, would stand out now, and Blaine had plenty of bullets left for them, even if the circus people didn’t.
Gunfire pouring from the final truck winged one of the galloping beasts and another leaped for its cab, terrifying the driver. The truck careened wildly and smacked straight into the Ferris wheel, tumbling it to the ground in a shower of sparks. Blaine had already switched his attention back to the gunmen on foot. They were easily identifiable since they were trying to buck the crowds, not flow with them, and his two pistols clacked alternately at easy targets.
One of Da Sa’s men managed to creep up unseen behind him, only to be smothered by a rush from the boys Reverend Jim had managed to gather together. Another two seeking cover were found and dispatched in quick fashion by Zandor. Blaine was flashing him the okay sign when his eyes fell on the tumbled remnants of the Ferris wheel.
“Patty,” he muttered to himself. “Patty…”
And then he was running toward the pile of ruined steel, where he had last seen her. Patty had crawled out from under the corpse of the Ferris wheel when she saw the gunmen approaching. Dashing across the midway, she leaped on top of the merry-go-round, which had somehow continued to spin throughout the entire battle. As she dived behind a wooden horse for cover, gunfire aimed for her splintered the wood and tore its painted head off. The merry-go-round picked up speed, and Patty stayed low, eyes searching for her hunters. She could see figures approaching through the rampaging crowd. The fun house would make for the best cover according to John. It was the next building over, set back a bit.
The merry-go-round circled again, and the approaching gunmen opened fire on the position where they had last seen Patty. Another horse blew apart as she scampered toward the edge, ready to make a run for the fun house. The ride was moving at its fastest clip, and the maneuver was not as easy as she would have thought. But she couldn’t risk another pass that would put her directly in front of the approaching gunmen, so it had to be now.
Patty leaped and hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb a measure of the shock. The fast-spinning merry-go-round provided the cover she needed. Patty ran up the ramp leading into the fun house and plunged into its dark confines.
She could tell from the murky lighting and eerie sounds that it, too, had remained operational throughout the chaos. She walked on, able to see barely a yard in front of her through the fake fog that was the first effect to greet patrons.
Suddenly a pair of red eyes flashed before her, accompanied by a shrill howling. Patty lurched back as the spring-driven ape-man recoiled upward, returning to its slot. The quickness with which the thing had struck gave her an idea. She reached in her pocket for the screwdriver she’d used to fasten the ticket box at the Ferris wheel into place. Looking around she found a crate and, after positioning it properly, stepped up on it and went to work.
Seconds later, she was finished, frame pinned against the wall, as the gunmen pounded up the ramp leading into the fun house. The two men entered the fake mist just a yard apart, confused by the darkness and the swirling fog. Just a little farther, she urged the lead gunman. Just a little farther…
The first man reached the spot where Patty had been greeted by the recoiling ape-man and, once again, the mass of rubber, wood, and fur dropped downward. Only this time, there was no spring mechanism to stop its fall and send it back upward, because Patty had removed it. The thing simply crashed into the man, knocking him down.
Patty, meanwhile, put the rest of her plan into action. She plowed into the second man with as much force as she could muster. The man was quick; he started to pull back on his trigger almost at once. But Patty had made his gun hand her first target; as she jammed it upward, the barrel spit orange heat.
“Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhh!”
For an instant, Patty wasn’t sure who was screaming; then she realized the ape-man’s tape was caught in a loop and was playing the same ugly cry over and over again. She held fast to the man’s gun hand with her left hand, while with her right hand she went for his eyes with her finger nails. She felt the nails part flesh, then tear sickeningly into his sockets. His screams were worse than the ape-man’s.
Patty spun away from the man, who was now groping blindly around, and grabbed the gun from his limp hand. She turned back in the ape-man’s direction just as the first man was shoving it off him, his gun coming up.
Patty shot first. Once, twice, as many times as she could pull the trigger until the distinctive click sounded, and then she kept on pulling in her panic. Ten feet before her the gunman let the pistol slide from his grasp. He looked more confused than anything else, as a pool of blood gushed from his upper chest. His head collapsed suddenly, but his eyes stayed open. The second man was still wailing, clutching desperately at his ruined eyes.
Patty pulled herself together again. These two weren’t the only ones left. More would be following them into the fun house, and she had to make use of this darkened labyrinth of a hiding place.
She crossed through the manufactured swamp area, complete with its eerie night sounds and moist, fetid walls, and realized she was still holding the spent pistol in her hand. She dropped it and felt strangely naked. Listening intently for sounds of pursuit, she kept walking, but the fun house’s taped sound effects made it almost impossible for her to hear anything.
Patty approached the chamber of horrors and crossed a threshold that triggered the monsters into motion. The mummy lunged from an upright crate. Frankenstein’s monster walked an unvarying path—forward and back—thanks to a spring connecting him mechanically to the wall. Dracula rose from a coffin that opened with a squeal and a whine.
The coffin! Maybe, just maybe…
Patty dashed over to it and stripped off the spring mechanism that opened it mechanically at regular intervals. The coffin top began to drop down suddenly, nearly crushing her hand. Chewing down her pain, Patty pushed herself into the coffin and squeezed the waxen vampire figure to the side. Then she closed the lid back down, the darkness swallowing her.
Zandor reached the Ferris wheel just after Blaine. Together they threw pieces of the shattered wooden platform and steel housing away to clear a path into the debris.
“Patty!” Blaine yelled as he dug through the mess. “Patty!”
At last he could see into the ruins of the chamber containing the Ferris wheel’s works. A single shape lay there, partially entombed by ruptured and splintered parts.
John Lynnford coughed out dust and dirt when Blaine reached him. His face was mined with cuts and lacerations.
“Where’s Patty?” Blaine demanded.
“They saw us under here,” Lynnford muttered, “so she left. To save me.”
“When, dammit?”
“Four minutes ago, maybe five. She went in the direction of the fun house.”
Patty regretted her strategy instantly. It wasn’t just dark in the coffin, it was black—and the figure’s poorly kept wax smelled like death itself. The coffin trembled slightly. Footsteps, lots of them, were thundering into the chamber. There were voices, too, rising in muffled fashion over the chamber’s sound effects. There would be no chance of escape at all, if the enemy lifted the coffin’s lid.
Frantically Patty began to feel about in the blackness for a weapon, but all she could come up with was the screwdriver she had used before. She took it from her pocket and held it tight with a sweat-soaked hand.
The footsteps were coming closer. The coffin trembled a bit more. She willed the lid not to open, but the lid began to rise, slivers of half-light puncturing the blackness of her tomb. She froze for a moment, then plunged the screwdriver outward at the blurring f
igure. A steellike hand grabbed her wrist in midair as the coffin opened all the way.
“Hope you don’t mind if I wake you up, Countess,” said Blaine McCracken, Zandor the strongman was peering over his shoulder.
Blaine helped a trembling Patty from the coffin, who then embraced him.
“I liked you better as a blonde,” he said, easing her away. “Tell me, what brings you to Rio?”
“Information, McCracken, and none of it pleasant. I found out what the victims all had in common. They were all adopted, each and every one. And many had extensive dealings with the Japanese.”
“Including your father?”
“Most certainly. But that’s not all. I asked the system to generate a list of potential victims based on the profile. I remembered that’s what you asked for.”
“Why is it I think you found some names I’m not going to like hearing?”
“Because I did, McCracken. One, anyway: Virginia Maxwell.”
Chapter 26
“HEAD OF THE GAP,” Blaine muttered, all the levity gone from his expression.
“I told Sal, and he tried to warn her. Next thing I know he’s calling me at sunrise to tell me someone tried to kill him and I’m next on the list. I just made it out.”
“I should have known, dammit. I should have caught on…”
“Caught on to what?”
“Later. Once we’re out of here.”
McCracken’s face was grimly set as he led Patty through the fun house.
“Sal sent me down here to tell you. He said you’d know what to do.”
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
“What’s it all mean, Blaine? What’s going on?”
They emerged into the night air, and Patty saw John Lynnford being carried across the midway on a stretcher. She rushed over to him.
“You’ve looked better,” she told him, taking his hand.
Lynnford grimaced. Bandages soaked with blood were wrapped tightly around his shoulder.
“Keeps me from thinking about my leg, anyway,” he joked, managing a weak smile. “That’s a first in quite a while.”
McCracken caught up with them and checked Lynnford’s wound. “Bullet passed straight through. Minimal bone damage, by the look of it. You’re lucky.”
“And you’re Blaine McCracken.”
“Ah, once again my reputation precedes me!”
Lynnford’s eyes swept the midway. “All of it deserved, apparently.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lynnford propped himself up on his good arm. “For what? You saved my circus. You saved her life.”
“All in a day’s work.”
“You’ll still need help getting out of the country. Even more so now.”
“Suggestions will be entertained.”
“I’ve got a few.” Lynnford winced in pain. “Just let me get patched up a little.”
“No sweat,” said McCracken, his eyes falling on Reverend Jim. “I’ve got someone else I’ve got to see.”
Reverend Jim met him halfway. They both looked at the cluster of his boys gathered around a pair who lay still in the night.
“We lost two,” Hope said sadly. “Edson and one of the older ones.”
Blaine’s stomach sank. “Both dead, thanks to me.”
“It wasn’t your fault. If they had done what you said—”
“It was my fault, all of it. They were doing fine in your world. They weren’t ready for mine.”
“Can’t say I ever met another sort who was.”
“But that didn’t stop me from using them, did it?”
“It was what they wanted, governor.”
Blaine started toward the boys, but Reverend Jim cut him off. “You could help them better by makin’ off with yourself and the lady, so this won’t be for nothing. Time’s a wastin’, governor. You read me on that?”
“I’ve got to do something.”
“Getting the people behind the bullets’ll do just fine.”
“Not for me, it won’t. Oh, I’ll do that all right—But I’ve got something else in mind.”
“Save it, governor.”
“Yes, Reverend, save. I’m going to leave you a contact code so you can reach me. Start using it in a week and then every day after. When my business here is finished, we can talk about paybacks.” Again Blaine’s eyes drifted to the children. “I want to send you some money to help set this straight—to set them straight.”
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“Nobody had to. Believe me, I have to do this. I’ll send you a hundred thousand dollars to begin with. That should be enough to get them out of the favela. After that, I’ll send you as much as you need to keep them from ever going back.”
Reverend Jim’s eyes were bulging. “Where’d a man like you get that much cash?”
“Friends in the right places, Reverend,” Blaine replied, staring into the distance. “All over the world.”
“What happens now?” Patty asked him as he started the engine of the car John Lynnford had left in the mall parking lot.
“We follow John’s plan and hope it works,” Blaine answered, stowing the directions to the airport Lynnford had had written out for them in his lap.
The route would make as much use as possible of back roads, steering clear of major arteries, where more of Da Sa’s men might be concentrated. Of course, this also meant that traditional means of escape couldn’t be used. A letter signed by Lynnford would hopefully provide the alternative here. The Orlando Orfei Circus frequently required the use of cargo services to bring animals and equipment into the country. Sometimes the proper papers were nonexistent, and cash was exchanged in their place. The letter presented to the carrier Lynnford most trusted should guarantee Blaine and Patty passage on the next cargo flight out of the country. The destination didn’t matter. The general direction of the United States would suit Blaine just fine.
“Finish what you started to say back at the carnival. I want to know what’s going on,” Patty said as the circus disappeared behind them. “I want to know what’s really going on.”
“I was hoodwinked.” He looked at her. “You were, too.”
“Make sense!”
“I can’t. Not yet. Virginia Maxwell solicits my services and then turns out to be a potential victim of what I’m supposed to stop. But when Sal warns her, she tries to have him killed. What does that say to you?”
“I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t have asked.”
McCracken squeezed the wheel. “Okay, we’ve got these successful Americans, all adopted and all suddenly on a hit list.”
“And the Japanese link—don’t forget about that. Which reminds me about the men…”
“What men?”
“The ones waiting for me at your hotel. All Japanese. They knew I was coming. Do you think Maxwell sent them?”
“No way. She’d never have dispatched any group that stood out that much.”
“Who, then?”
“Good question. Wish I had an answer. The thing is, there’ve been two groups operating in this all along. Your father and Virginia Maxwell are part of one. Whoever sent out the six killers is part of another. But where does that leave the disciples?…”
“The what?”
“Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”
Patty thought for a few moments as the car drove on through the night. “Who was it that was after us at the circus?”
“A crime lord named Da Sa got himself killed, and I got blamed. Whoever really killed him made sure of that…and then made sure to link you with me.”
“The Japanese?”
Blaine shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He hesitated. “The thing is…”
“I’m listening.”
“No, it’s too crazy.”
“Nothing’s too crazy at this point.”
“Okay, try this out. What if one of our forces was behind the placing of all these adopted babies? Your father, Virginia Maxwell, every last one of them.”
“Toward what end?”
“They grew up to be rich and powerful, didn’t they?”
“What are you saying, McCracken?”
“I’m not sure yet, Hunsecker.” Patty turned away and gazed out the window into the night. “What about my father? Maxwell tried to kill me, and you’ve drawn a link between—”
“I haven’t drawn a link between anything. I’m just playing with the facts, seeing how they fit together. Anyway, Virginia Maxwell is still alive.”
Patty shifted in the passenger seat and pressed herself against the door, staring at her dim reflection in the window.
“I killed a man tonight,” she said, with strange matter-of-factness.
“Who would have killed you if you hadn’t.”
“Save the dime-store philosophy for somebody else, okay? In that moment I think I understood you better than I ever have, McCracken. I understood what it’s like to be cornered and have no choice but to fight back. I understood what it’s like to kill someone and not feel anything about it.”
“Because you had no choice.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I look back and I want to be sick, feel sick, but I can’t. All I feel is…nothing. That man doesn’t have any meaning, like he wasn’t real.”
“He was real only in the sense of trying to kill you, Patty. That’s what Johnny Wareagle would say, and he’s right. You saw him in the context of what he was, and that context is the only meaning he had to you.”
“You don’t understand. The context is the problem. I could shoot a man, I could do everything I’ve done these past couple weeks, because of my father. Except now I find out maybe my father wasn’t the innocent victim I thought he was. Maybe he was part of something I didn’t know about that got him killed, and maybe, too, he wasn’t such a nice guy after all. You see, McCracken, if his life was a lie, then so is mine. None of it means anything anymore.”