Bullets and Beads

by Jana DeLeon

  Then a thought occurred to me. I sent a text to Mannie.

  Is ambulance still parked outside ER entrance?

  Yes.

  Send coordinates for SUV, then stand by.

  10-4.

  I looked at Ida Belle and Gertie.

  “I have an idea.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  A couple minutes later, Gertie had signed the papers officially relieving the hospital of any and all responsibility related to her release and had absolutely refused to get into a wheelchair unless they sedated her. The exhausted hospital nurse just told her to go and advised Ida Belle and me to assist her. I grabbed her elbow to steady her as we walked down the hall. She was reasonably good except for the occasional sway that came with a bout of dizziness.

  I glanced back every so often to see if the hallway was clear of personnel. As we inched closer to the supply room, the nurse who’d brought Gertie the discharge papers slipped into a room and left the hall empty. I opened the door to the supply room and we all hurried inside.

  “When I was in here earlier, I saw two hazmat suits,” I said. “The ambulance is still parked outside and I noticed the paramedic left the keys in it.”

  “You want to steal an ambulance?” Gertie asked.

  “There are at least five terrorists outside,” I said. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No,” Gertie said. “I think it’s a great idea. It’s just that it sounded more like something I’d suggest than you.”

  “Desperate times,” I said.

  “Let’s do it,” Ida Belle said.

  “But you said there were two hazmat suits,” Gertie said. “How is that going to work?”

  I pointed to a body bag.

  Gertie shook her head. “No way! I’m not getting in that thing. I’ll suffocate.”

  “I’ll cut a hole in it,” I said. “In order for the hazmat suits to pass muster, we have to be transporting someone contagious. And it’s the only way to get all three of us into the ambulance without arousing suspicion.”

  “Then let Ida Belle do it,” she said.

  “You were swaying when we walked down the hall,” I said. “If we end up having to run, you’ll be a hindrance. Is that what you want?”

  Gertie frowned. “Fine. But I want to lodge an official complaint about always having to be the dead person.”

  “I always have to be the slut,” I said. “We all have roles to fill.”

  “Stop your complaining,” Ida Belle said. “It’s a much bigger stretch for Fortune to play a slut than for you to play a dead person.”

  Gertie stared. “As soon as I’m not dizzy—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “Let’s get this show on the road before a call comes in and that ambulance is no longer there for the taking.”

  Ida Belle and I suited up, and then I cut a hole in the body bag and we got it onto a gurney and Gertie inside.

  “What about my purse?” Gertie asked as I started to zip the bag up. “We might need that stuff.”

  “As much as I hate to admit it,” Ida Belle said, “she’s right.”

  I unzipped the body bag and sat her purse on her stomach. “There, now you’re pregnant.”

  Gertie gave me a look of dismay. “I prefer dead.”

  Ida Belle grinned. “See. Things can always get worse.”

  Gertie moved her arm, probably to give Ida Belle the finger, but before she could manage to do it, I zipped her in place.

  “No noise,” I said. “Corpses don’t speak.”

  “They fart,” Gertie said.

  “Go right ahead,” Ida Belle said. “You’re the one zipped up like a sandwich.”

  I peeked out of the storeroom to make sure the coast was clear, then pushed the gurney into the hallway.

  “Just go straight through the lobby without stopping,” I said to Ida Belle. “Even if the front desk clerk tries to stop us.”

  I picked up speed as we went, hoping that going fast would further indicate the urgency of the task. As we burst into the lobby, the front desk clerk jumped a bit, then her eyes widened.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “Is everything all right? Wait! You need to sign out.”

  “No time,” I said, forcing my voice low. “The suits are only good for two hours. We’ll sign when we get back.”

  The clerk stood there staring as we hurried out but didn’t make a move for her phone. She must have been new and didn’t know protocol very well. Either that or she’d seen everything under the sun and this didn’t rank high on the oddity list. We hurried out the doors and the gurney started rocking from side to side when we hit the parking lot.

  “Stop moving,” Ida Belle said.

  “I have a wedgie,” Gertie complained.

  “Dead people don’t get wedgies,” Ida Belle said.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the ambulance still sitting in its reserved parking spot, but as we started to turn the gurney in its direction, Gertie must have gotten in a good tug. The gurney tipped to the right and before we could stabilize it, it fell over, sending Gertie to the ground with a crash.

  She let out a strangled cry, and an older lady being helped to the hospital by a younger man took one look at the body bag and made the sign of the cross.

  “Sometimes they come back,” Ida Belle said.

  The woman’s eyes widened and she swayed a bit as the younger man practically pulled her toward the entrance. Ida Belle and I bent over to lift Gertie back onto the gurney.

  “Good God, woman,” Ida Belle said. “You have to stop eating like crap.”

  “It’s not me,” Gertie said. “It’s my purse. I’m about to puke with this thing sitting on my stomach.”

  We plopped her on the gurney, then hauled it for the ambulance before someone reported us to the hospital staff. Or the CDC. Ida Belle opened the back of the ambulance and we got the gurney folded and into the back. Then she hopped in with Gertie and I went around to take the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition, just as I’d seen before, and I said a quick thanks for the employee who hadn’t followed protocol while also asking him silently for forgiveness when Human Resources came down on him.

  I started up the ambulance and backed out, scanning the parking lot as I went. I spotted a man standing next to a car and watching the ER entrance. He had his cell phone to his ear but he’d forgotten to move his lips, so his acting needed work. Another man walked down the sidewalk, but instead of glancing at the sea of hot women who were passing just to the right of him, his gaze was locked on the ER entrance as well.

  No wonder Mannie had spotted them. They were practically waving flags. A flash of something caught my eye as I pulled onto the street, and I looked up and saw a man with a sniper rifle on the roof of a neighboring building. I felt my pulse spike as anger coursed through me. The sniper wasn’t there for me. He was there for my father. But any one of us could have caught a bullet meant for him. If the operatives were willing to attempt an assassination in broad daylight and right in front of a hospital, then I needed to get back to my house and get secured as soon as possible.

  My father had said he’d attempt to draw them off and for whatever crazy reason, I believed him. But they’d still be watching and the more time that passed, the bolder they would become. I had to secure my home and my family first and figure out a way to get that information to Morrow without leaving Sinful and without it being intercepted. I had a few ideas on the first and only one on the second.

  “Get me out of this thing!” Gertie complained.

  “I forgot you were in there,” Ida Belle said as she pulled off her headgear and grinned at me. “There better not be a fart waiting for me when I unzip this thing.”

  “Would serve you right if there was,” Gertie said as Ida Belle unzipped the bag. “But unfortunately, I couldn’t work anything up. Probably because I haven’t eaten since Moses was a baby.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a buffet in that handbag of your
s,” Ida Belle said.

  “I swapped it for a dart gun,” Gertie said.

  I cast a nervous glance in the rearview mirror but Ida Belle didn’t seem concerned. I supposed in the big scheme of things, Gertie and a dart gun were small potatoes. I stopped at the corner and paused long enough to check my text messages for coordinates to the SUV.

  “So what’s the plan?” Gertie asked. “I hope it includes lunch.”

  “It does if you have a casserole ready to go,” I said. “But no stops until we get back to Sinful.”

  “We’re taking this thing all the way to Sinful?” Gertie asked.

  “Okay, one stop,” I said. “We’ll retrieve Ida Belle’s SUV on the other side of town where Mannie has it ready to go. Then we head straight home.”

  “Do you think this will buy us enough time to get home without incident?” Ida Belle asked.

  “I hope so. Because I don’t think sending his guy to Florida with the tracker is going to help. My guess is my father put that tracker on your SUV, and he won’t be looking for us again. The question is whether the rest are all clustered in New Orleans watching me.”

  “Or waiting in Sinful,” Ida Belle said.

  “When they can’t find us in New Orleans, they’re going to figure we went home anyway,” Gertie said.

  “Yeah, but I’d prefer to get there before they do,” I said. “Gives us time to prepare.”

  “Just how many people do you think are involved?” Ida Belle asked, looking worried.

  In my haste to get out of New Orleans, I’d completely forgotten that Ida Belle and Gertie only knew part of the story. My heart tugged as I realized that these women had followed my directive to steal an ambulance and flee the city based on nothing more than my saying it was necessary. Words couldn’t begin to describe how much I loved them for the trust and respect they had for me.

  The problem was, how much did I tell them—none of it, all of it? At that point, it probably didn’t matter. The enemy would assume knowledge if they decided my father had made contact with me and that would be that. But I couldn’t go down that road. For my own sanity, I had to assume that they didn’t know my father had made contact.

  Because that was the only way we had a chance to come out of this unscathed.

  But it wasn’t fair to leave them in the dark. They needed to know what we were risking our lives for. That was only fair. So I told them what my father had conveyed, minus the personal stuff and the names on the list. When I was done, they both sat in stunned silence. Finally, Gertie spoke.

  “Do you believe he’s telling you the truth?” she asked.

  “I do,” I said. About the coup. Not about being sorry.

  “I think we have to believe him,” Ida Belle said. “Why else would he be here? It’s a huge risk to him. Even his own government is looking for him. If some catch sight of him, they’ll lock him up. The rest will just kill him. And besides that, I can’t imagine contacting Fortune was something he ever wanted to do.”

  “Coward,” Gertie said. “I’m sorry. I know he’s all ‘I’m trying to save the world’ but to me, he’ll always be a douchebag.”

  I felt my heart clench at Gertie’s tone.

  “I don’t think anyone is going to disagree with you,” I said. “Least of all me. But the coup planned would produce global unrest, which then produces chinks in the armor. We can’t have that kind of lapse in our national security. Not even for a second. And the list of people scares me. It goes far up the food chain.”

  “Do you know any of them?” Ida Belle asked.

  “I know all of them,” I said.

  Ida Belle blew out a breath. “Wow. That’s beyond words. I feel like I keep saying this, but what’s the plan?”

  I spotted Ida Belle’s SUV parked at the curb of the side street where Mannie had left it and pulled up behind it.

  “First, we get out of these suits and into your SUV,” I said. “Then I’ll let Mannie know we’re mobile and he’ll send his guy off toward Florida with the tracker, then head for the highway, hoping to intercept us on the way home. You’re going to take over driving from here, and I’m counting on you to know a back way to the highway, just in case they’re watching the main exits from the city.”

  “I’m on it,” Ida Belle said as she shrugged off her suit.

  Gertie looked disappointed. “I was hoping we could keep those. Halloween isn’t that far off.”

  “They’re too expensive,” I said. “I don’t want the poor guy who left the keys in the ambulance to never work again.”

  “I suppose he did give me a ride to the hospital,” Gertie said.

  I stepped to the back and pulled my suit off as well and we hauled Gertie out of the body bag. Then I opened the back door of the ambulance and stepped out. I didn’t pause because stationary targets were easier to hit. I didn’t think things had progressed to that level, but if my situation with Ahmad had taught me anything, it was that when dealing with terrorists, you couldn’t always rely on common sense.

  Ida Belle and Gertie hurried after me as I located the keys under the back wheel where Mannie had indicated they’d be. I tossed them to Ida Belle and jumped into the passenger’s seat and we were off. I pulled out my phone and sent Mannie a text.

  Clear. Send your guy out.

  On it. Avoid the area around the hospital.

  Already have a plan.

  10-4.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket and hoped my plan was good enough.

  “Aren’t you going to call Carter and fill him in?” Gertie asked.

  I shook my head. I’d already gotten several texts from him and my responses had been short but normal. If he had any idea what was going on, he’d rush to New Orleans and that was the last thing I needed him to do. The fewer people outside of Sinful, the better. It was time for everyone to get in the castle and pull up the drawbridge.

  “This is the sort of conversation that needs to happen in person,” I said.

  “What if the bad guys are already in Sinful?” Gertie asked.

  “Then they picked the wrong place,” I said. “Carter is already on alert. No one can take him by surprise.”

  I clenched my hands until my nails dug into my palms.

  At least, that’s what I was telling myself.

  Ida Belle maneuvered around the streets of New Orleans until the buildings turned into neighborhoods, which then turned into more rural areas with acreage instead of lots. I’d been watching the mirrors carefully but so far, there was no sign of unwanted company. Mannie had texted that he was performing evasion procedures and would try to fall in with us on the highway. He was in a black Cadillac sedan with limo-tinted windows.

  It seemed like hours had gone by when we finally passed our last cow and pulled onto the service road for the highway. I pulled Ida Belle’s binoculars from the glove box and scanned both sides of the road but didn’t see anything of merit. There were only a few cars and they looked to be common for the area—older-model sedans with a bit of rust, huge pickup trucks, and minivans with those stick figures on the back. It occurred to me that one of those vans would make an excellent cover and make it easy to haul firepower, but I didn’t credit the enemy with that much creativity.

  We were ten miles or so down the road when a black Cadillac sedan pulled onto the highway behind us. I lifted my binoculars to see if I could ascertain that Mannie was the driver when the headlights began to flash in an odd rhythm. It took me a second to realize it was Morse code.

  G-O-O-D-J-O-B

  I grinned. Yep, that was Mannie. I filled Ida Belle and Gertie in and they both relaxed some. Despite things being easy so far, I could tell that they were both as on edge as I was. Not that I blamed them. This was serious business. And with multiple factions at play—all unreliable—it just made things harder to predict.

  We were twenty minutes from Sinful when trouble hit.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A car had been parked behind the embankment for an overpas
s. As we went by, it dashed onto the highway right behind us, intercepting Mannie in the process. There were metal guards low over the tires and I had no doubt the hood was reinforced as well. The windows were tinted so dark I couldn’t see inside, but I had zero doubt as to who was in that car.

  “Floor it,” I told Ida Belle, and hopped into the back seat with Gertie.

  The SUV leaped forward, pressing Gertie and me into the back of the seat as we peered over. Unfortunately, the car had something special under the hood because it lost only a little ground before covering the gap again. Mannie had dropped back, his sedan unable to keep up. Ida Belle’s time machine was fast but the weight difference between it and the enemy’s car evened them out.

  Gertie and I aimed our pistols over the back seat and waited as Ida Belle lowered the glass.

  “Aim for the driver’s-side windshield,” I said as I squeezed off a round.

  The bullet hit the glass and bounced right off. The fact that the driver kept coming rather than slamming on his brakes told me everything I needed to know.

  I cussed. “Bulletproof glass.” I looked at Gertie. “Do you have the Eagle with you?”

  “No,” she said. “You guys kept complaining about me carrying it.”

  “She picks now to care what we think,” Ida Belle said and handed me her .45. “Try this.”

  I didn’t figure I was going to have any more luck with the .45 and I was right. I tried two rounds—one in the windshield and one in the hood—but both ricocheted off. Even worse, the car kept inching closer and I saw a pistol come out of the passenger window. Ida Belle didn’t have guards around her wheels. If they took out one of her tires, then we were in trouble. The three of us and Mannie could probably handle one car, assuming we were all operational after the crash, but there was always the chance that this unit had already called for backup.