The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  Blaine picked up his pace through the crowd, intending to cut the woman off. Sirens were already screaming as she walked briskly toward the Congress Street side of the marketplace. She never so much as gazed back, so Blaine had no chance to meet her eyes as he fought his way through the surging crowd.

  So intent was his focus on this woman that he almost missed the second. His first glimpse was of a figure in black rising out of nowhere and the crowd suddenly spreading before her twenty-five yards from the street. He saw the machine pistol next and dove headlong behind a steel divider as the rat-tat-tat split the air. The bullets clanged and ricocheted wildly. Glass from a nearby flower shop shattered and sprayed the air. The panicked crowd charged everywhere in search of escape. McCracken ran low to the ground as he tried to close the gap between himself and the shooter.

  A pair of police cars spun to a halt on Congress Street, and the officers lunged out with guns drawn.

  “Stop! Police!”

  McCracken heard that command just before the woman turned and emptied the rest of her clip in their direction. One of the cops was blown backward instantly, while the other managed a single shot before his chest was shredded. McCracken was back on his feet now, slithering forward behind what meager cover he could find. The taller woman tossed the machine pistol aside as another police car screeched to a halt before her. The officers had barely started to jump out when the smaller of the women yanked a nine-millimeter automatic from inside her leather jacket. She lunged forward, firing repeatedly, even after the policemen had fallen. She stopped only when she drew even with her much larger companion.

  The big one turned and Blaine fixed his stare on her. She was decked out in black leather and had blond stubble for hair. She was huge, maybe a couple inches under seven feet if you included her boots.

  McCracken thought of the killers of John Neville and Henri Dejourner and went cold.

  These two! It had to be!

  They must have read his expression, because before Blaine could get near them, the huge one with spiked hair led the other toward the closest abandoned police car and lunged inside. These women had orchestrated this entire murderous episode, and had earlier killed a pair of men he liked. What’s more, they had kidnapped Matthew and might thus be his only chance of finding the boy if Evira had failed to recover him from Rasin’s clutches.

  The women in the police car headed into traffic on Congress Street, bearing onto North Street even as McCracken stood there. He began to sprint futilely in their direction. A vehicle was what he needed, and the perfect one for the job loomed directly before him.

  Godzilla bucked and thumped like a horse restrained for too long. A driver who’d been about to ease it onto a nearby carrier had abandoned the monster truck with the gunshots and left the door open. A deft leap brought Blaine into the cab and he slammed the door behind him. The cockpit looked not much different from an ordinary pickup truck, except for a series of additional gauges mounted upon the dashboard. What was new to him was the notion of driving from a vantage point over a dozen feet off the ground.

  McCracken shoved Godzilla into reverse, and the monster truck’s long-idling engine greeted the move with a huge thrust backward that threw him toward the dashboard. After fastening the shoulder harness, Blaine spun the wheel for North Street, intending to veer directly across Congress in pursuit of the police car comandeered by the two women. He shifted into drive and gave the monster truck some gas.

  Godzilla shot forward as a pair of police cars from opposite directions spun into screeching skids that brought them hood to hood directly before him. Blaine was in no mood or position to change his course at that point. The murderous women already had a headstart on him. Blaine simply kept the champion car crusher going toward the pair of police cars.

  He felt only a brief jolt as the crusher’s Alaskan tundra tires rolled upward onto the hoods, one tire for each. Then Blaine felt a settling and heard the sound of twisting, collapsing metal. Godzilla’s progress never stopped. Its back tires finished the job its front ones had started before the stunned police could even draw their guns. He managed a glance in the rearview mirror and saw the police cars compressed into neat rectangles in the center of Congress Street as he steamed down North Street.

  Faneuil Hall was on his right and the modern Bostonian Hotel on his left as he started his pursuit of the murderous women. Where there was no room in the pulled-over traffic to maneuver, Blaine created it. Fenders, doors, even entire front or rear ends were destroyed as a result. McCracken for his part barely felt a single impact, and only occasional glances in Godzilla’s rearview mirror revealed the carnage left in his wake.

  He turned right onto Surface Road beneath the Route 93 overpass and was caught instantly in a hopeless snarl of traffic. Frustration had just started to set in when he noticed a single police car in the midst of it, the only squad car that was heading away from the chaos instead of toward it.

  The women! It had to be!

  He had them now. No reason to rush or be too bold. Just lay back and make his move once traffic started going again.

  Who was he kidding? He was behind the wheel of a towering monster the women had certainly noticed by now. They would know it was him. They would know because they were professionals.

  As he formed that very thought, traffic started flowing again and the police car veered instantly right onto Central Street at the very rear of the marketplace.

  “Come on!” Blaine urged the traffic before him, losing his patience at the last second and forcing a pair of cars into a wild spin when he cut between them to continue his pursuit.

  He caught a glimpse of the squad car as it grazed the rear of a delivery van that had backed up blindly. The driver had just lunged out, arms raised, when Godzilla slammed his van sideways from its path. The vehicle rocked as if weightless and McCracken continued on his way after the women, who had turned onto Milk Street from Central.

  Milk Street was strangely free of traffic, but India Street adjacent to it was jammed. The women had at last activated their siren to clear their path, which was much too narrow for Godzilla to manage without endangering the lives of dozens of motorists by crushing their vehicles. That left him with only one option.

  Blaine spun Godzilla to the right and drove the tires on its driver’s side up onto the row of cars parked bumper to bumper along the street, while his passenger-side tires balanced precariously on the sidewalk. Parking meters toppled like twigs before him. Water sprayed from a ruined fire hydrant, and McCracken reached for the windshield wiper switch. He kept the fleeing police car in sight as best he could as it passed back beneath the Route 93 overpass en route to Surface Road once more.

  A ramp leading onto the expressway was dead ahead. The women were heading toward it now, knowing full well there was no way he could catch them on the open road. No way at all. Blaine did the best he could to give chase, honking his horn to keep Surface Road passable and alert unsuspecting drivers to what was coming.

  It seemed futile. The squad car was gone up the ramp by the time McCracken pushed Godzilla through a red light after it. Expressway pace would provide the women the advantage they needed, with the monster truck’s size and poor visibility certain to cause chain collisions that would create a hopeless snarl. Still Blaine gave it gas and reached the head of the ramp. Frustration simmered within him, and he was about to pound the windshield when the greatest sight ever greeted his eyes:

  Traffic, enough to keep the squad car from getting up speed. Already the women were opting for an immediate exit ramp labeled “South Station.” Blaine felt recharged. Godzilla filled out the width of an entire lane, but that was plenty enough to keep him on the trail. Cars before him blindly tried for lane changes left and right, and the monster truck claimed their vacated spots and rolled on to take whatever else it wanted. He motored onto the exit ramp with the squad car dead ahead, heading toward an area of heavy construction with a right down Summer Street.

  Godzilla followed
its quarry from Summer onto High Street by way of a short cut across Bay Bank Plaza which sent pedestrians scurrying. To keep close on High Street, Blaine mashed parked cars where space demanded. Whatever time was lost in the effort was made up by the constant weaves the squad car was forced to make to avoid cars. They came at last to Bedford Street and crashed through a sawhorse without seeing the telltale sign:

  CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION

  Construction on a water main had shut down Bedford Street from end to end, but the squad car had already committed. The street was totally torn up; it was an obstacle course of deep holes, sawhorses, and open ditches.

  The women’s car took an awful beating, but Godzilla negotiated the conditions easily. McCracken felt himself being jolted upward in his seat time and time again, but he was gaining, damn it, he was gaining!

  Just a car-length away, he saw the huge blonde lean out the passenger window and fire pistols with both hands. Godzilla’s windshield exploded and Blaine ducked low to avoid the spray of glass. The next series of shots clanged off the crusher’s grill and Blaine knew the blonde was now aiming for the tires or the radiator. But the tires were solid all the way through and the radiator reenforced with extra layers of steel.

  Feeling confident, Blaine rose just enough to see over the dashboard and jammed Godzilla’s accelerator all the way to the floor. The crusher’s engine roared as it shot forward with a burst of speed that brought its monstrous tires within a yard of the police car. Then an unmarked ditch off to the right caught one of Godzilla’s tires. Blaine felt the sudden drop with a jolt. He gunned the engine but the monster truck was caught at a difficult angle even for the 640-cubic-inch engine to power out of. As the squad car struggled down the rest of Bedford Street, Blaine rocked Godzilla between forward and reverse. At last the monster truck jumped free. Blaine gunned the engine and roared the final stretch down Bedford Street to where it ended directly before Lafayette Place. He had either a left or right to take now, and he was certain the women had turned right.

  Soon after swinging onto Chauncy Street, he saw the tail of their squad car screech into another right. McCracken sped past traffic, which pulled over in front of him, and followed the women down Summer Street. The traffic was heavy, but by blowing his horn to alert drivers to his presence he succeeded in having enough cars pull over to keep his path cleared.

  When he passed between South Station and the Federal Reserve Building, traffic suddenly thinned. He had the squad car dead in his sights. Only a hundred yards separated them, but the women were speeding away from the field, seizing the open stretch down Summer Street for their final escape.

  McCracken was fighting with Godzilla for more speed when ahead he saw an eighteen-wheel tractor trailer backing slowly across the width of Summer Street. It was obviously having trouble negotiating a delivery slot in a building on his side of the road. The squad car came to a halt behind the eighteen wheeler, trapped once and for all.

  Seeing his chance, Blaine darted into the empty lanes of opposing traffic and sped forward. He sideswiped one car and then squeezed between two others. Suddenly the police car was directly before him. He gave Godzilla all the gas it would take and felt it shoot forward as though eager for the task ahead.

  The monster truck mounted the squad car, and trunk, roof, then hood gave way like plastic. A series of pops followed as jagged metal pressed into the tires and flattened them. The police car sunk even lower. Godzilla continued to roll forward.

  At last the crusher touched pavement again and Blaine threw Godzilla into neutral and jumped down. He reached the driver’s door, ready and eager to deal with the women inside.

  A frightened Boston police officer with his face bleeding from a host of cuts gazed up at him in abject terror. And all McCracken could do was melt innocently away, wondering where exactly it had been that he’d lost the women.

  Chapter 19

  “YOU DON’T MIND ME saying, Mr. M., you look, ayah, like fucking hell.”

  McCracken almost asked the harbormaster, with his sun-wrinkled flesh, sunken eyes, and liver-spotted hands, who was he to judge? But instead he just shrugged and settled farther back on the bench to wait for the ferry to take him across the bay to Great Diamond Island.

  “Been a slow night, has it, Abner?”

  “Was till near about two hours ago. Someone at the Estates must be having a party I’d say, ayah.”

  Blaine forced his shoulders upright at that. “Lots of people make the trip over?”

  “Near ’bout a dozen, ten anyway,” the harbormaster replied. His faced angled in its typical quizzical expression. “Funny thing now that I think about it, they were all men. Three cars, three or four to a car.”

  “Shit,” McCracken said, standing up.

  “Huh?”

  “How long ago, Abner?”

  “Couple hours, like I said.”

  “How long exactly?”

  The harbormaster scratched at a wrinkled, sunken eye with a finger blackened with dirt. “Five runs back. Say two-and-a-half hours.” His eyes bulged suddenly. “Hold on. You’re gettin’ that look you had when you made that man drive his car into the bay. Took me a half day to dredge it out. Don’t make me do that with three cars, not three cars, please!”

  “Don’t worry, Abner, I’m not in the mood.”

  Blaine’s mind was working fast. After abandoning Godzilla, he had stolen a car from the Boston Aquarium parking lot and driven straight through to Maine. He arrived at the harbor two hours past sunset, which would have given the women plenty of time to have arranged for a team to be waiting at his island condominium. They would have expected him to head back home under the circumstances. The only anomaly was that they hadn’t left any of their number here at the harbor. Then again, if they tried for him here and missed, he was gone. If they went for him on the island, their chances would be better and his opportunity for escape far worse. Should have been more careful with Abner, though, maybe sent the cars over one or two at a time to avoid suspicion. They’d learn their lesson when he didn’t show up.

  “Still got that double-barrel twelve gauge, Abner?” he asked the harbormaster.

  “Mr. M., you promised you wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not gonna use it on them, Abner. I just need a little insurance. Like to borrow it, if I could.”

  The old man eased himself behind the counter and drew the iron relic out. “Take care of it now. It belonged to my daddy.”

  “Which makes it older than you.”

  “Ayah. Considerably.”

  “Terrific.”

  Abner handed it over. “Tip you gave me last Christmas more ’an entitles you to the favor, but if you’re in trouble, Mr. M., seems a mite better to sit here awhile and think it out, I’d say.”

  “No can do, Abner,” Blaine said, already making his way for the door.

  “Got someplace you gotta be?”

  “Just going to visit a friend.”

  McCracken made sure to announce his presence on Johnny Wareagle’s land by breaking selected trip wires in a pattern that could only be purposeful. The last thing he wanted to chance after coming this far was an arrow from one of Johnny’s many bows.

  “How unnecessary, Blainey,” Wareagle said after McCracken stepped through a door that had already been opened for him.

  “Good evening to you, too, Indian. Suppose you were expecting me.”

  “For several days now. The disruption of your manitou is brighter than a beacon. I could feel you drawing closer and closer, almost since the very time we parted ten days ago.”

  “I’ve seen plenty of the world,” Blaine told him, “some of which hasn’t been seen by anyone for over forty-five years.”

  Wareagle looked at him more closely.

  “It’s a long story, Indian. And right now I’ve got to tell the last part of it to someone else. Let’s take a ride.”

  McCracken filled Johnny in on everything that had occurred over the past ten days, from the details of Matthew’s
kidnapping to his travels to Japan by way of Israel and then, literally, into the Pacific Ocean. The Indian had been concerned by the cryptic message received the week before with instructions of what to do in the event of Blaine’s death. He claimed he paid it little heed since he knew McCracken would be returning.

  “I guess what it comes down to, Indian,” Blaine said at the end, “is that the world has never mattered less to me. It’s just one life I’m out to save this time, and if I can’t get the boy out of this alive, then stopping Rasin won’t mean shit.”

  “But you would try anyway, even if not for the boy.”

  “A couple of years ago for sure. Today I don’t know. What all this has shown me is whatever I’ve felt I’ve been lacking these last few months is purely a state of mind.”

  “Everything is a state of mind, Blainey, and that state of mind affects our state of being as well. When there is harmony between them, we are content with our lives. When one is out of balance, we search blindly for that which can be found only inside ourselves.”

  “Should I take that to heart?”

  “The boy became the stitching which rejoined your two states together. That is what has changed in you these past months, but even I did not realize it clearly until now.”

  Blaine felt himself nodding. “It was like an emptiness. I felt it go away that day I spent with him in London, and even when those women kidnapped him the emptiness didn’t return.”

  “Because in either case the boy supplied you with purpose. Through all our years in the hellfire and beyond, purpose is what maintained harmony in the triangle of your mind, body, and spirit. The betrayals—and your acceptance of them—stole that purpose away and cast you on your own, where you had to create your own purpose. Sometimes the justifications came up short. You became an orphan of your own lost emotions. But then you saw yourself in the boy and that changed everything.”