Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 02 - The School for Mysteries

by Carolyn Jourdan

  Lester’s main office was in an old Esso Station that he’d spared no expense in restoring to its original condition. The station didn’t actually sell gas, but sometimes you could wangle permission to use the pristine antique pump, just to keep it in working condition. But you had to pay the going rate rather than the 31¢ a gallon it was set at.

  Thinking about the Esso station reminded Phoebe that she had no idea how much fuel was in the million dollar car. She wasn’t sure if it had a gas gauge. She didn’t even know if it ran on gas. Oh, well, it was too late to worry about that now. She hoped they had enough to make it to wherever they were going. If only she knew where that was.

  One thing she did know was that Lester and his boys were gonna love this car.

  Fate, Lester’s second in command, answered the phone at the Esso station. “Where are ye?” he asked.

  Phoebe tried to explain her situation to him as quickly as possible with a minimum of emotional content or babbling. Early in her narrative he interrupted her to say, “Puttin you on speaker so Lester can hear.”

  Otherwise neither of the men said anything to stop her from describing what was going on and asking for their advice and help.

  “You need to get to the national forest,” Fate said, when she was finished speaking. “Yer right on the edge of it now. If ye can git into there, there’s all kinda loggin roads. They’ll never be able to foller ye if ye’ve got a good lead.”

  “Talk fast,” Nick warned. “As soon as we top this ridge, we may lose the connection.”

  Fate explained the route he wanted Phoebe to take. She repeated everything he said to Nick, so he could help her remember.

  “We’ll head your way now,” Fate said. “If ye can stay ahead of em for an hour, we’ll take over from there and handle things. Do ye think ye can do that?

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe said, “We have a good lead now, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last. We’ll give it our best shot.”

  She heard Lester say something in the background and the speakerphone went off. Lester said, “Give me your cell number.”

  Lester and Fate were already on the move. If there was one thing hoods loved, it was a fight.

  Chapter 30

  The Gryphon glared at his subordinates and said menacingly, “If this gets out....” He left the rest of his threat to their imaginations.

  He paced in front of the wall of glass, oblivious to the spectacular panorama of Central Park. “This can not get out,” he said, with emphasis.

  “Don’t worry,” his lieutenant said, “It’s too complicated. People are too lazy to focus on anything this arcane. There’s no entertainment value.”

  “What’s the entertainment value of anything on television these days?” the Gryphon responded.

  “You’re right, sir, of course, I should have said that the sort of sex and violence and lifestyles of the rich and trashy that are successful now, are a far cry from post-graduate level economics and ugly moments in history that are best left forgotten. This guy has no financial resources, no media platform, and no friends.”

  “Then how did he escape from an aircraft in flight nude and without a parachute? How is that even possible?” He slapped his desk with an open hand making a sharp crack, then he screamed, “How is that possible!”

  The Chief of Security stepped forward and assumed the rigid stance the military used to simulate relaxation and said, “Sir, there is no way this man can survive.”

  “Where is he now?” he asked, giving his security chief a hard stare.

  “He’s in the Appalachian Mountains near the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. We’re about to regain his position. Then we’ll handle him. This will be over within the hour.”

  When he was back in his own office, the security chief smirked and said, “There’s no way a bunch of hillbillies can win this.”

  “You’d better be careful,” his lieutenant warned. “The mountains breed fierce people. And their home terrain is naturally defensible.”

  He flipped a switch that illuminated a screen mounted on the wall. He clicked some keys on a wireless keyboard and a world map appeared. Then he made some hand gestures in the air that set various markers on the screen.

  “Consider the European Micro-States like Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Luxembourg, and Cyprus. Mountains define these places. Think of the intractable wars in Afghanistan, Tibet, Kashmir, the Caucasus, Rwanda, and the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Do not underestimate your opponents.”

  If he’d been smarter he’d have added Ireland and Scotland into that list of irascible and intractable foes. A dozen generations of these feisty souls had been born and raised in Appalachia and now a handful of their most outstandingly reactive descendants were blithely awaiting his arrival.

  Chapter 31

  Nick and Phoebe were lucky in so many respects. It was a glorious summer afternoon and the car was running perfectly. After they located and made the first crucial turn off the hardtop road and onto a dirt logging road that led into the Pisgah National Forest, they both felt considerably safer.

  Although the tall wheels on the car gave them excellent ground clearance, they had to slow down on the narrow uneven surface. But even at the reduced speed, they were still making good time.

  Phoebe knew her friends would be hurtling toward them. She didn’t know who the people were who were after Nick, but she knew one thing for certain, they were no match for Lester and Fate.

  Angry Appalachians were justifiably world famous for their ability to create mayhem. The White Oak area was the Afghanistan of the Western World. It had been invaded several times and was occupied by two alien forces at the moment—the National Park Service and retirees from Michigan—but they’d never be conquered.

  Fate had given clear instructions, so Nick and Phoebe were able to maintain a relatively steady heading for the crucial hour he’d asked them to give him.

  “There they are!” Phoebe shouted, as she pointed to the two pieces of heavy equipment beside the road up ahead of them. There was a track hoe with pincers and a ferocious looking machine with jaws and a saw on a boom. This was heavy-duty commercial logging equipment. Phoebe assumed it belonged to the company that had the contract with the government to log the area.

  She raised up off her seat and waved over the top of the windshield, making the special redneck call local women used to be heard across long distances or over the roar of farm equipment. A generic name for the sound might be a yodel or hog call, but it was mostly used to call men in from a field for their meals or to get someone’s attention if you needed to warn them.

  Men tended to use the piercing whistle made by putting their tongue against their front teeth, but despite many years of trying Phoebe had never been able to lean to whistle like that. Lester and Fate waved back from atop the well-used yellow Caterpillar warhorses.

  Phoebe was constantly amazed at the ability the men of her region to drive nearly anything. She had no doubt they could fly the space shuttle if necessary. All the local kids grew up learning to drive on tractors, but then the genders tended to split and the boys progressed until they’d mastered every conceivable sort of motorized transportation. Thinking about this filled her with pride.

  Fate signaled for them to keep going and Nick shot through the gap between the roaring machines. The mechanized beasts clattered and growled and then closed the road behind Nick and Phoebe.

  They wanted to stop and wait to see what was going to happen, but Fate signaled for them to keep going. If hand gestures could’ve spoken fluently, his said, leave now and don’t look back.

  They wouldn’t have been able to see much anyway because the machines were blocking most of the view, but before they went far, there was a terrible crashing and grinding noise behind them. It was followed by the loud revving of a d
iesel engine and a horrible pterodactyl-like screeching sound pierced the wilderness.

  Despite his instructions, Nick slid to a stop and a cloud of dust boiled up around the car. Phoebe stood up in her seat and looked back in time to see the pinchers grab a black SUV by the roof and lift it off the ground. A hydraulic ax clipped the lower portion of one of the front wheels off, the boom tilted the SUV the other way, and the axe severed the other front wheel.

  “My God, it’s like watching an Appalachian Transformer movie, but it’s real!” Phoebe said.

  “Monster trucks meet mercenaries,” mumbled Nick.

  There was a burst of automatic weapons fire, and some screaming.

  “Should we go back? Do you think they need us?”

  “Nope,” said Phoebe. “We better do as we’re told.”

  After the first vehicle was disabled, the track hoe started making its way up onto the hood of the second SUV.

  Nick floored the Rolls and tore off through the woods. He drove the little convertible like a professional moonshiner, obviously having a great time.

  “Are you enjoying this?” Phoebe asked, incredulous. The escapades with the logging equipment had shocked her back into panic mode.

  He nodded and smiled. “Yes! And you know why? Because I’m not dead!” he shouted. “That’s great news. And I’m over … I’m over ….”

  He glanced at her, struggling for words.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Everything!”

  “Like what?”

  “I didn’t get out much. Before.”

  She suspected that was a massive understatement.

  He glanced at her again, clearly hoping for her understanding.

  “I didn’t get out all, really. But I’m out now, and I’m still breathing, and I’m driving one of the greatest cars on earth, and you’re with me, … and it’s all good.”

  When he put it like that, Phoebe had to agree.

  Chapter 32

  They’d made it maybe three miles further along the logging road when they were met by an old Toyota Land Cruiser painted matte black. The driver stuck his head out the window and waved.

  “It’s Jakey,” Phoebe said, “I know him, he works with Lester and Fate.”

  Jakey got out and walked to the Rolls. Phoebe was torn between shame and pride when she saw the look Jakey gave the car.

  “It’s a Rolls-Royce,” she said proudly. “I stole it.”

  He gave Phoebe an appraising look and laughed. “Girl, I underestimated you.”

  He turned back to examine the car more closely. It was utterly incongruous for a vehicle like that to be sitting on a dirt road in the middle of the deep Appalachian woods.

  “We thought it’d be best for y’all to switch cars,” Jakey said, “just in case. O’course I had no ideal what ye were drivin. Now that I see it, I’m gonna need to modify the plan.”

  He walked around the car, inspecting it from all sides. “Sister, ye mighta overshot the mark with this’n.”

  “Whaddya mean?” she asked.

  “I’m impressed, I’ll give ye that. But a car like this’n’s pretty high profile. Ye did a good job gettin her, but we can’t let ye keep her. Don’t worry, we’ll git ya’ll outta here but then we’re gonna have to put this back where she belongs. I’ll wipe her down real good first.”

  Phoebe glanced back the way they’d come.

  “There was quite a bit of racket back there. I hope things are goin okay,” said Phoebe, still worried.

  Jakey smiled and held up a walkie-talkie and said, “I can guarantee things are goin just fine. Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll do a little bit of tidyin here up and then we’ll be right behind ya.”

  “Fate told me to give you this,” Jakey said, and handed Phoebe an M-1 carbine loaded with an extended clip. Then he held out two more clips.

  “He’s so sweet,” Phoebe said, and got into the passenger side of the Land Cruiser with the rifle and set the extra ammo in the floor at her feet.

  The outside of the Toyota was low-key in the extreme, but it was quite the opposite on the inside. It was pristine.

  Nick got in on the driver’s side and said, “Where do you people get all these vehicles?”

  “It’s just part of the local lifestyle. It’s how we entertain ourselves. This Land Cruiser is nice, but you haven’t lived til you’ve ridden in an amphibian. Daddy used to have a six-wheel drive ATV called a Buffalo – an amphibious vehicle the military uses in the Arctic. That thing would go anywhere.”

  Jakey waved bye, and they waved back.

  Nick shook his head as he did a neat three-point turn in the Land Cruiser. Phoebe studied his determined, no-nonsense profile. This was a different guy than the one she’d met the day before. Getting out of the house, or, more specifically, the basement, was good for him.

  “Nick nodded toward the rifle and asked, “Do you know how to use that?”

  “Very well indeed,” replied Phoebe.

  “Could you really shoot someone with it?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I don’t think anybody can say ahead of time what they’d do. I know it would be a lot easier to shoot somebody in defense of someone else than it would be to defend myself. But here, when a man hands you a gun, you take it and say thank you. This isn’t the sort of place where you can have a sane discussion about guns or whether and under what circumstances you might find yourself able to use it.”

  “You have quite the cadre of friends,” Nick said. “Who are they, some sort of militia?”

  “Honey, the whole southern Appalachian highlands is one big militia. It always has been. We’re born into it. We serve on active duty all our lives—men, women, children, and dogs.

  “We don’t start wars,” she added, “but we do love to participate.”

  “Do you hear anything?” Phoebe asked.

  Nick stopped the car, rolled his window down, and then when he thought he might be hearing something in the distance, switched the engine off.

  At first all he heard was wind in the trees, then he began to make out a familiar whomp-whomp-whomp.

  A helicopter was coming.

  “Oh, hell no,” he said. “Not again.”

  He cranked the Land Cruiser and drove it off the road and into the woods, hiding it as well as he could.

  The chopper flashed by and kept going without a pause. “Reckon they’re lookin for their friends?” Phoebe asked.

  “I’d say so.”

  “They know not what they do,” Phoebe quoted.

  A few moments later there was an explosion, followed by a shrieking sound, and then another, even bigger explosion.

  “What was that?” Nick asked. “Could they have shot the helicopter down?”

  Phoebe shrugged.

  “Wouldn’t you’d have to have a rocket launcher to do something like that!”

  Phoebe shrugged again.

  Nick said nothing, just pulled out from between the trees and continued down the dirt road headed toward White Oak.

  Chapter 33

  Jill had brought her television into the café and set it up on the counter so everyone could watch it. It was tuned to CNN. “You’ve gotta see this,” she said to Phoebe. “You’re not gonna believe it. You two are on the national news. They’re talkin about Nick’s book.”

  “Book?” Nick said. “There’s no book.”

  It should’ve been impossible for the media team to have produced a book in the brief time since he and Phoebe had left Chateau St. Cloud. When he’d been kidnapped from his basement office in Cleveland two days ago, he’d had half a dozen filing cabinets filled to bursting with research notes, countless teetering stacks of paper covering every available surface, and a 2,000 page rough d
raft manuscript.

  Even if the St. Cloud people could’ve reached Tommy the pizza guy immediately, which was only a few hours ago, all he’d had on the flash drive was the same 600,000 word draft. The greatest editor in the world couldn’t have cleaned that manuscript up in a few hours.

  “There’s no book,” Nick repeated adamantly.

  “It was on cable first,” said Jill, “but now it’s on all the regular networks, too. Ya’ll have gone viral. They’re usin that video of you everywhere like they did that Chinese fella who stood in front of the tank.”

  “What video?” Phoebe asked. “What’s gone viral?”

  Doc, the retired local physician, pointed at the screen and said, “That.”

  Phoebe watched in amazement. What appeared to be a hodgepodge of amateur footage of the chateau and clips from security cameras had been cut together to make a short film that painted the story of their adventure as well as any big-budget Hollywood production ever could have. In fact, this was all the more riveting because it was obviously spontaneous and real.

  First there was a wide shot of the chateau to help people understand the size and scale of the place. Then there was the hair-raising scramble out the first window and Phoebe and Nick’s walk along the high exterior ledge. It must’ve been taken by a tourist standing on the front lawn.

  Nick’s athletic leap and scramble onto the observation platform and subsequent hoisting of Phoebe after him was astonishing, if not exactly flattering to Phoebe. Next came footage of them running through the house while being chased by men wearing body armor.

  The footage of their terrifying transit of the ledge inside the Banqueting Hall, first on one side of the long room and then the other, would’ve been unbelievable, except that it was obviously real. The nearly unbearable tension of the situation was temporarily alleviated by the comic relief of the feisty little gray-haired docent using a mop handle to trip the soldier who was attempting to run the length of the dining table.