by Karen Randau
Cliff hollered, “Hawyaw,” followed by a slap on flesh.
Panicked hooves thundered on cement through the garage. Elk surged into the house, one rearing back so close that its leg hair bristled my cheek. I ducked and veered away with my back against the wall.
The animal’s foot landed on Hercules’ upper chest, causing Hercules to fall and the elk to crash into the wall beside me. It bucked a hole into the wall before skidding on the slippery wood toward the front door.
Hercules fell against the wall, struggling to pull in a breath. I kicked him in the groin. He let go of Taylor, clutched his crotch, and fell to his knees as more animals stampeded past. I yanked Taylor off his shoulders.
We plastered ourselves against the wall and inched away from Hercules, waiting for a break in the stream of elk so we could run.
Taylor held her hands over her ears and screamed. “They’ll trample us.”
I angled my arm across her torso. “Don’t panic. Look for a way out.”
We were closest to the French doors behind the couch. Six terrified elk blocked our path. I surveyed the room while inching toward the glass doors.
Lena stood on the granite island, aghast at two elk that had sought an escape through the kitchen. Kyle Park stooped on the dining table. He looked like a sprinter at the starting line, ready to jump over the elk that blocked his path out the French doors. Frank stood halfway up the staircase glaring at me.
Where was Cliff? I needed Cliff right now.
Hercules found his composure and stood with his back against the wall, shaking his head to get his senses to work again.
Taylor and I had only traveled a few feet away from him.
He lunged toward me. “Suka!”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t think he called me his sweetheart. I surprised him by jabbing his Adam’s apple with my knuckles. He choked and slithered down the wall again.
Something crashed against the outside the glass doors. Again. And again. They flew open. I got a glimpse of Cliff before the entire elk herd crowded through the doorway.
“Cliff!” I wanted to run to him. There were too many elk in the way. “They’re sending tainted mustard packets to the Phoenix ballpark tonight. Leave me. Stop them.”
I didn’t know if Cliff heard me, but I had to try.
Frank took the stairs two at a time and disappeared into the hallway leading to the upstairs bedrooms where they had locked Taylor and me.
As the last of the elk galloped out the door toward the forest, Cliff stepped inside holding a tree branch.
Kyle Park pounced off the table onto Cliff. Cliff swung his branch, but Kyle caught it with his hands. He and Cliff wrestled out the door.
I worried that Cliff was still too weak to overpower Kyle. I needed to get to him.
“Run!” I snagged Taylor’s hand and dashed toward Cliff and Kyle.
Automatic rifle fire sent us to the floor. I looked up long enough to see Lena crouching on our side of the kitchen island, hidden from Frank. I hoped she was on our team.
As I rolled to my hands and knees, I glanced outside to see Kyle sitting on Cliff, his left elbow on Cliff’s face, his right hand raised over his own head. He held a large rock.
My mind focused on helping Cliff, who had wrapped his legs around Kyle’s neck. I stood and took a running step toward him as Lena slithered out the patio doors Cliff had shattered.
So much for her being on our team. We’d have to get out of here without her help. Or Cliff’s.
Why did Lena throw a flower pot on the back deck? I didn’t see what she pulled out of the potting soil.
I heard a semi-truck drive past. Then another. And another.
The rifle popped a dozen more rounds. The chandelier fell to the floor, blocking the front door. Frank yelled, “You two stay right where you are.”
Looking up the barrel of Frank’s weapon, I wished the floor could swallow me. Taylor’s fingers dug into my arm.
I could feel her panicked breathing on my neck as she hid her face and whispered. “I think you made the Incredible Hulk really mad.”
I held up my hands, palms toward Frank, and whispered to Taylor, “Hulk, Hercules, same difference.”
“Hercules was a good guy. Hulk just destroyed things without thinking. See the fury in that guy’s eyes?”
“Yeah.” I looked into dark eyes that flared with rage as baseball-mitt sized hands descended toward me.
44
Of all the things I could have felt when Hercules lifted me over his right shoulder and Taylor over his left, the door hinge pins hung heavy in my pocket.
As he walked past the sofa table, I pulled the three Maasai spears from the art display and clenched them in my fists.
At the door to the garage, Hercules let go of me long enough to turn the knob. I reached over my head to gain momentum and stabbed his back as deep as the weapons would go.
He dropped me against the doorjamb. He and Taylor slumped onto me.
“I can’t breathe.” I gasped.
Taylor jumped up and rolled Hercules off me. He grabbed her forearm.
I seized the door hinge pins from my pocket, clenched one in each fist with the ends extending about an inch, and jammed them into his temples.
I slid as I tried to stand. “Run,” I wheezed to Taylor.
“Not without you.” She kicked the unconscious man into the garage and closed the door.
Together we propped Hercules against the door, so it wouldn’t open.
With a quick look around, I saw the button to open the garage door, a white van in the middle of the room, gardening tools along the walls, and a six-foot rolling tool chest in the corner. I pushed the button and darted toward the tool chest.
“Hurry. I don’t know why Frank isn’t here already.” I rolled the tool chest toward Hercules. “Help me turn this onto its back.”
The cabinet crashed to the cement, metal clanking inside the drawers. As the house door slammed against Hercules, we heaved the tool chest, angled it over Hercules, and shoved. It slammed against the door.
Bullets splintered the door’s center two panels.
“We’re gonna die!” Taylor took a running step.
“Get down.” I pulled on her wrist as I rolled under the van and crawled on my elbows toward the exit. I hoped she followed.
As I emerged from under the van, the sight of Lena with a gun caused my heart to feel as if it slid into my knees. I prepared to fight while I glanced around in search of my husband.
“Come on,” Lena said. “We have to intercept the delivery trucks. I’ll call for backup in the car.”
I didn’t stop to wallow in my confusion.
Cliff’s unmarked police vehicle slid to a stop on the circular cobblestone driveway where we stood, its blue and red light flashing. Cliff rolled down the window and yelled, “Hurry! We need to catch them before they reach the highway.”
Wearing a backpack he didn’t have before, Frank ran around the corner from the behind the house. He raised his AR-15 toward his shoulder.
Lena took a shooting stance, her bullet knocking the rifle from Frank’s hands. He fell to his knees and held his palm against his shoulder. Blood seeped between his fingers. He fell to his side, then rolled and crawled toward the garage.
I pulled Taylor toward Cliff’s car. I approached the front passenger door, hoping to live long enough for Cliff to explain what was happening.
Lena pushed me into the backseat, followed by Taylor. Lena got into the front and stuffed her gun into her waistband.
“Rita, Taylor, buckle your seatbelts.” When Cliff stomped on the accelerator, Taylor and I tumbled against the back of the seat. “This will be a rough ride.”
The back end of the car skidded as Cliff turned onto the dirt road, then careened around the curve toward the highway.
“I need a phone,” Lena said to Cliff. “Frank took mine.”
He tossed her his cell.
She dialed. “This is Special Ag
ent Lena Sorokin.”
The digits of her badge number scrambled in my head. Special Agent? Sorokin? Was she related to Dr. Grigory Sorokin, the doctor who tried to drug Cliff in the Phoenix hospital? Was she FBI? What?
“I’m with Rim Vista Police Detective Cliff Avery,” Lena hollered into the phone. “We’re in pursuit of a blue and white tractor-trailer. Two others took off before it, one headed to Los Angeles and the other to Lubbock, Texas. They’re loaded with mustard packets tainted with skladium. It’s the pathogen used on Rim Vista residents. We’re on the highway north of Rim Vista, headed south toward town. I think the mustard will be delivered to the Phoenix ballpark unless we stop it. The other trucks went the opposite direction and will make deliveries to universities out of state if we don’t stop them.”
She told the listener about Frank Miller and the man I’d been calling Hercules, gave the address and added that she didn’t know if either was dead.
“Miller could be driving a white van north,” she said. “He is armed with an AR-15. Both men are extremely dangerous, even with their injuries.”
On her next call, she said, “Sir, this is Lena. No need to send in the extraction team. I have some new news though. I found Anatoly Yaskin. He’s Frank Miller. You could have told me Yashkin knew my father in their youth.”
I heard the male voice talking but couldn’t make out the words.
“How could you not have known they both served as doctors in Afghanistan?” She rolled her eyes and said that wiping her work experience from all databases saved her, along with feigning disgust with her father, and Cliff and me throwing chaos into the situation after her cover was blown.
When she finished her call, she faced me. “You’ve done good investigative work.”
While Cliff screeched around mountain curves, Lena explained that she infiltrated Frank’s cell of Russian spies and soon suspected that he had duped everyone into believing the Russian government had sent him.
“Frank grew suspicious of me when my father tried to administer a decades old antidote to Cliff. Dad recognized the symptoms and tried to help with no one knowing it. You stopped him.” Her expression turned stern.
I felt myself sink into the seat.
“Yashkin connected Dad and me when I sent him a text asking if he knew anything about skladium. I didn’t expect Yashkin to disarm me, take my phone, and tell a man the size of Mount Rushmore to follow me everywhere I went.”
According to Lena, the plan was to scare the public into thinking there was a nationwide attack on the food supply. Kyle Park would then sell the CDC his entire company, including the inventory and equipment. Then Frank and Kyle would go their separate ways and retire in countries with no extradition to the U.S.
“I’m sure the plan was to kill Taylor and me before leaving the house. Thank God you two showed up when you did.”
Tapping Cliff on the shoulder, she gestured toward a tractor-trailer in front of us. “We have to stop it before it gets to Rim Vista. No telling what he’d do there.”
Snatching her gun, she said, “Can you get alongside of it?”
“I can try,” Cliff said. “In these mountain curves, we might run into another car.” He pulled up behind the trailer. “What’s your plan?”
“Try to get the driver to pull over. If he won’t, shoot him.” She rolled down her window.
As Cliff veered into the left lane, a gun emerged from the driver’s window.
An oncoming vehicle forced Cliff to reduce his speed and retake our position behind the trailer. “There’s a short passing lane ahead. I’ll get in front and slow before the next big curve.”
He sped into the passing lane, but the driver started shooting.
“Duck!” I pushed Taylor down and laid on top of her.
Lena hung out her window as she emptied a clip into the truck.
Cliff backed off.
“What are you doing?” Lena shoved a full clip into the gun.
“There’s a fifteen-mile-an-hour curve ahead,” Cliff said. “If he takes it at this speed, he’ll take a hundred-foot plunge down the mountainside.”
As the driver approached the hairpin, he must have realized he couldn’t make it.
Brake lights flashed. The tractor and trailer toppled onto the side. The truck’s cabin slid toward the side railing, and the trailer skated toward us.
I resisted the urge to join Taylor in her eardrum-splitting scream.
Cliff shifted into reverse, throwing me against my seatbelt as the car bounced back through smoke from the burning rubber.
45
Cliff and Lena had their doors open and guns out before the car stopped.
“Stay here,” Cliff said to Taylor and me.
Kyle Park emerged from the window of the truck’s cab. He shot the pistol from Lena’s hand.
Cliff rolled toward her. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Taylor’s a paramedic,” he yelled. “Get her to help you.”
With Lena disabled, Kyle was now shooting at Cliff.
I surveyed the surroundings and found a path up an embankment to get behind Kyle.
When Cliff saw me clawing up the embankment, he yelled to Kyle. “Park, you can’t get away. The FBI is on its way, as is the Rim Vista PD. Give up now.”
Kyle continued shooting as I ran to the top of the hill and slid down the other side. I walked toward Kyle’s back.
Cliff stopped shooting. “I’m out of ammo. You win.”
Kyle trained his gun on Cliff and took a step forward. “Let’s all get in your car and drive away from here.”
I took a running leap and kicked him behind the knee.
He fell, and his gun slid across the asphalt. The way he jumped from his back to his feet, I knew I was in trouble. He must have kept the hand-to-hand combat skills he learned in the military. My only hope was to try outwitting him.
I screamed and yelled while stomping my feet and tapping my fingers together over my head. I danced toward his gun, then kicked it away.
As Cliff approached, I gave Kyle a straight punch to the gut, then held his arms as he pushed me away. He fell with me. I kneed him in the stomach.
He choked me.
Cliff jammed his Glock onto Kyle’s right temple. “Unless you want to find out if I lied about being out of ammo, let go of my wife.”
46
Kyle relaxed.
I helped Cliff turn Kyle to his stomach and hovered while Cliff cuffed him.
“You have a right to remain silent…”
Cliff’s voice faded as sirens approached. State troopers and Payson PD cruisers blocked the highway in both directions. Officers swarmed around Cliff and Kyle. Chief of Police Ronald Williams helped Cliff pull Kyle up and lead him to the back of a cruiser.
They stood talking as a black helicopter emblazoned with the letters FBI hovered overhead. Ronald gave the pilot a thumbs-up.
With a two-fingered salute, he moved the chopper toward Frank Miller’s house.
I turned toward our car. Taylor and Lena hugged, and then Lena walked my way.
She stopped in front of me and held up a hand wrapped with one of the cloth napkins I had packed for a special picnic to celebrate Cliff getting out of the hospital.
“Thanks for the bandage.”
I nodded, pushing back the sting in my eyes. I wanted to save the emotions for the privacy of my home. When I was alone with Cliff.
Lena placed her uninjured palm on my shoulder. “If it weren’t for you and Cliff showing up, Taylor and I probably would be tied up in a white van at the bottom of the reservoir. That tractor-trailer would be well on its way to Phoenix rather than laying on its side in the middle of the highway. The country would soon be in turmoil over thousands of people sickened from tainted mustard packets. I imagine some congressman would introduce a bill to ban condiments at universities and ball games. I can’t thank you enough for figuring it out and sparing us those tragedies and that chaos.”
I managed a quie
t thanks, reminding her she was the one who infiltrated the cell and tipped off her father about the pathogen.
She continued on and joined Ronald and Cliff in their conversation.
I leaned beside Taylor against the hood of Cliff’s vehicle.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” she asked.
“Remember my late husband Jared?”
She nodded.
“He used to teach us moves during Family Fight Night every Friday. The kids and I didn’t realize it at the time, but he knew his sins had put us in danger. Entertaining us like that was his way of making sure we could defend ourselves. We thought we were having fun.”
Cliff approached me. “I don’t think flamenco dancing was part of Family Fight Night.”
“Your aunt taught me that.”
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and I pulled Taylor into our embrace.
On the ride home, Taylor sat in the back and called her boyfriend while I rang Travis from my place beside Cliff.
My son said he was feeling better and stronger.
“Strong enough to have a family night by going to the World Series together? You guys. Your sister and her new husband. My mom. Aunt Zelda. Everyone.”
“Absolutely.”
I set down the phone and laid my head on Cliff’s shoulder.
“Ronald said they stopped the rest of the mustard deliveries,” he confirmed. “One truck was headed to UCLA, and the other was on route to Texas Tech. The ten people in the spy cell we broke up had disbanded after the Soviet Union dissolved. Frank Miller convinced them Russia had sent him to reunite them and carry on the cause of infiltrating the utility grid.”
I snuggled against him, content to have him beside me. “I’m glad it’s over.”
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