"Chain Reaction" Power Failure Book I

by Andrew Draper

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Power-sliding his 1968 Ford Bronco to avoid the on-coming traffic, Ed climbed the on-ramp to I-295 and accelerated into the storm. He’d debated with himself for several long minutes before deciding to follow Carla. He knew any confrontation between Aaron and federal agents would end badly. He had to try again to convince her of Aaron’s innocence. He banged his hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

  Typical transplant! No respect for the New England winter. Don’t these people know how dangerous these storms are?

  He replayed the encounter with the lady agent in his mind while the wipers struggled with the ever-increasing snowfall. While on one hand he found her to be frustrating in the extreme, there was still something about her that intrigued him. He readily admitted that she was not only a stone fox, but obviously uber-intelligent and driven as well. He briefly imagined the two of them sipping Cognac in front of a crackling fireplace and smiled.

  Why did she have to be so dammed stubborn? Ed groused internally as he struggled to see through the still-falling snow. I can help her find Aaron…and we wouldn’t be out driving in a blizzard right now. Women!

  Snapping back to the present, he yanked the wheel hard, correcting the Bronco’s drift as he felt the truck’s oversized tires and four-wheel drive struggle to maintain their tenuous grip on pavement.

  Down-shifting the hand-built five-speed transmission, Ed concentrated on keeping the vehicle from sliding off the ice-covered road as the cockpit reverberated with the intimidating bark of the 429cid Super Cobra Jet engine rescued from a wrecked police interceptor.

  While the partially restored classic was the product of hundreds of hours of work and sported in the neighborhood of 600 horsepower, Ed rubbed his gloved hands together and mentally kicked himself.

  Why didn’t I fix the heater last week, when I had the dashboard out?

  Following the fresh tracks in the compacted snow, he rounded a curve, still searching ahead for any sign of the agent’s G.I. sedan. Minutes later his heart skipped a beat when he spotted the blinking emergency lights through the white waves ceaselessly pounding the windshield in front of him.

  Slowing as he approached, he counted three cars stopped on the road and several people walking toward a hole in the guardrail.

  Oh, Shit! This is not good!

  Hoping against hope that it was someone else and not Agent Raven, he slid to a stop and jumped down from the truck, retrieving a flashlight and a first-aid kit from under the seat as he went.

  Striding purposefully through the deep snow piled on the road’s shoulder, he closed on the group of onlookers before seeing one set of tracks leading off the road and down the embankment.

  “Anybody see what happened?” He asked.

  The man next to him answered while pacing nervously along the road’s shoulder. “Somebody slid off the road and hit a tree,” he said. “Some guys went down to check it out.”

  Ed peered over the edge and his heart sank at the sight of the agent’s sedan resting upside-down as expanding clouds of steam billowed up from the crushed engine compartment.

  He also noted a man carefully making his way down the steep slope to where the car lay wedged against the base of an enormous maple tree.

  “Did you call 9-1-1?” Ed asked the man standing next to him peering down at the wreck.

  “Done,” the by-stander said. “They’re on the way.”

  Crouching down and sliding on his heels, Ed shot past the man carefully picking his way down the slope. He reached the agent’s car to find another man already there, trying to pull open the driver’s side rear door.

  Taking in the chilling scene of still-smoking destruction, Ed’s trained eye followed the line of the inverted sedan’s roof, now bent at a sharp angle where the windshield frame had folded. The driver’s door was completely crushed, the window space reduced to only a few inches.

  “Is anyone alive in there?” he called as he skidded to a halt near the rear bumper.

  The man struggling with the crushed door answered. “There’s a woman in here. She’s alive, but she’s trapped and I can’t get the door open.”

  “Did you try the other side?” he asked.

  “Yep. It’s twisted up good.”

  Ed scrambled to the front of the car doing a quick check for any sign of fire or leaking fuel along the way.

  Seeing none, he turned his concentration back to the woman trapped behind the wheel.

  “Agent Raven can you hear me? It’s Ed O’Brian.” He said while he enlisted the help of the men, yanking unsuccessfully on the jammed door.

  A strained voice, tinny and weak, came from inside the mangled vehicle. “Yes. I can hear you.”

  “Are you injured?

  “I’m a little banged up but not too bad.” She said.

  He peered in through the driver’s window, now reduced to a three inch gap between the door and the collapsed roof. Grimacing in pain, the trapped agent looked back, her face marred by dirt, a fine line of blood trailing from a small cut on her forehead.

  “No head wounds, arms and legs moving all right?” Ed asked, still assessing her condition and trying to concoct a plan to extricate her from the shattered hulk. He stood, quickly surveying the area for something to help pry the door open.

  She struggled against her bonds and answered. “I think my left arm is broken. I can’t move it. Everything else hurts like hell, but it all works.”

  Ed returned to the window, and the trapped agent’s expectant stare.

  This car could blow any second. I’ve got to get her out…fast.

  His calm voice concealed a vaulting sense of urgency. “We can’t force the door, so I’m going to break the window on the other side and get you out that way. Are you pinned by anything?”

  “No. I’m just hanging by the dammed belts.” She said, pasting a grim smile on her pain-racked face.

  Noticing the dash lights still glowed a bright green, a half-baked idea suddenly flashed through Ed’s mind. “The power is still on. Can you reach the window buttons?”

  “I think so.”

  “If you can, try to put the window down.”

  She used her uninjured arm, reaching across her body to the control panel and found the switch. He heard her wince in pain as she moved.

  Ed moved to the passenger side of the car and watched the transparent wall began to move upward with agonizing slowness, emitting a low groan of protest. Just when he thought it would work, the frozen air was suddenly split by a short, high-pitched squeal as the window came to a halt.

  “Damn!” he threw the profanity out in frustration.

  He pulled off his gloves, rubbing his hands against the cold. He stuck his fingers through the narrow slot just created under the glass.

  “Try it again!” he said, leaning against the mangled door.

  Muscles straining, Ed pulled up on the glass while the window motor whined in a losing battle.

  A loud crack! rent the air as something inside the door let go and the window began to slide upward again, the glass pinched tight but still moving. Grunting with the effort, Ed levered the window the rest of the way up, creating an opening large enough for the injured woman to crawl through. He pulled off his jacket and laid it inside, using it as a cushion against the broken glass scattered on the roof, now floor, of the overturned vehicle.

  Returning to the driver’s door, he stuck his arm in through the narrow opening next to her head. “Okay. Now I’m going to cut you out of this belt and you are going to drop to the roof of the car. Use your good arm to protect your head.”

  The metallic snap of Ed’s K-Bar Tactical Ops knife followed the brief warning.

  “Brace yourself. Ready?”

  Inside the car Carla gave a weak nod of her head. “Ready.”

  With a strong backward pull, he slid the razor sharp blade through the belt’s webbing. Free of the belt’s restraint, Carla became a Newtonian experiment in gravity.

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nbsp; “UUUmmmfffff!” She hit the roof of the car with an audible thud, the air forced from her lungs.

  “Aahhh!” she yelped in pain as she rolled to her stomach, clutching her injured arm to her side. She crawled slowly, moving toward the open window and stuck her head out. Ed grabbed the collar of her jacket and unceremoniously dragged Carla from the sedan’s twisted wreckage, bringing a sharp hiss from the injured woman’s lips.

  He dragged the still-woozy agent clear and leaned her against a tree, immediately spotting the unnatural angle of her dislocated shoulder as he reclaimed his jacket and put it on.

  “Agent Raven, are you with me?” he waved his hand in front of her face.

  She brushed his arm away in irritation. “Yes. I can hear you. I’m okay.”

  “Do you think you can walk?

  Standing unsteadily to her feet, Carla brushed a stray lock of hair from her pain-lined face. “Yes, I think so.”

  Ed turned to the by-standers. “Okay. Let’s get the lady topside.”

  Struggling to keep the thumps and bumps to a minimum, Ed and the pair of good Samaritans guided, lifted and sometimes carried the injured federal agent up the steep slope toward the road above. The distant wail of sirens reached their ears as they crested the embankment.

  Ed dropped the Bronco’s tailgate and brought the injured woman to a sitting position on the cold steel platform as the siren’s shriek grew louder with each passing second. He laid the first aid kit on the tailgate next to Carla and began cleaning the still-bleeding cut on her forehead. “Are you sure you’re not hurt any place besides your arm? That knot looks pretty bad.” he said.

  She instinctively raised her good arm and gingerly dabbed at the small wound on her forehead. “Oh, it’s okay,” she said, examining a drop of blood left on her fingertips. “I just banged it against the window when the car went over.”

  “Well it’s bleeding. We’ll let the doctors check that out when they look at your arm.”

  An interminable two hours later, the pair sat in an emergency room cubicle, the constant noise of the intercom fraying Carla’s last remaining nerve. Her head felt like it would explode any second and she was in no mood for an overly-cautious doctor.

  She winced, gritting her teeth as the physician tightened the wrap around her now-reset shoulder.

  “Besides the dislocated shoulder, you have a pretty nasty bump on the head. I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.” he said.

  “I told you, I’m fine,” her words left no room for argument, the rebuttal unyielding. “I just want to get out of here. I have work to do.”

  Ed spoke as he paced the tiny room. “Well that may be, but the Doctor said you might have a concussion. You shouldn’t take that lightly.”

  She shot him a withering glare. “I’m not taking anything lightly. I dislocated my shoulder and got a little knot on my head, no permanent damage. I need to get back to my office, back to looking for Casey and Ryan…now.”

  The doctor stepped between the two, facing his not-so-patient, patient. “Miss Raven, I really must insist that you stay here. For you own safety.”

  Ignoring the taller man, she looked around the room. “Where’s my jacket?”

  Ed pointed to the cabinet to Carla’s left. “I put it over there.”

  He crossed the room in two long strides, retrieving the garment and handing it to her.

  An obstinate mask of determination forming on her face, Carla dug in the pocket, pulling out the small black wallet Ed had seen earlier in the day.

  “I’m an adult,” she said, showing the physician her badge. “I am also a Federal Agent. I’m checking myself out. Please prepare the paper work.”

  Shrugging his shoulders, the doctor turned to face his patient, “I can’t stop you,” The doctor said as he made notations in her chart. “But I advise against it.”

  “Understood,” she said as she stood. “Thank you for all your help doctor.”

  The doctor slid Carla’s chart back into a holder on the wall, shaking his head as he left the room.

  “Okay. Now what do we do?” Ed asked, holding out her jacket so she could slip it on.

  “I have to get another car…and another phone. Then I go back to work. You go back to doing whatever it is that you do. If I have any more questions, I’ll contact you.”

  Ed saw one last opportunity to convince the agent to let him join the search for Aaron and Dr. Ryan. “I can drive you back to your office.”

  “How? You came in the Ambulance with me.”

  “My Bronco is downstairs. I had one of my guys drop it off while you were with the doctor,” he said with a boyish grin. “I couldn’t leave a classic like that sitting on the side of the road.”

  Carla rolled her eyes at the comment, recalling the less-than-pristine appearance of the ancient sport wagon.

  “And I grabbed your phone…thought you’d want it.” He said.

  A hint of genuine surprise crossed her face as he handed her the wireless device.

  Still a little unsteady, the agent got to her feet and moved toward the door. “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. I’ll call for a ride.”

  He placed a hand on her good shoulder, his overriding concern for her health now blending with annoyance at her resurfaced resistance. “You realize, you could have been killed out there.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “My God, woman!” he said, throwing his hands over his head. “How can you be so damned stubborn?”

  He took several deep breaths, reigning in his frustration. “I can help you. I said it before and I’ll say it again. I know Aaron better than anyone, and now that you’re injured you are going to need some help. We could start by figuring out who really took that material from Ryan’s lab.”

  She moved her injured arm with a small wince, “This is nothing. You want to help? Tell me where Casey would go if he wanted to disappear. That would help.”

  Ed folded his powerful arms across his chest in defiance. “I told you before. If you go after him without me, someone is going to get killed.”

  She leaned forward, her face now scant inches away from his. “And like I told you before, this is a federal investigation of a murder and possible espionage. Civilians don’t get to be involved in those kind of things…period.”

  Frustration boiling to the surface once again, Ed snapped at the woman in angry retort. “Agent Raven, quite frankly you don’t have a prayer of finding Aaron, or this Ryan woman, without me. Not any time soon that is. I can be an asset and up to now I figured you to be smart enough to realize that.”

  “Not a prayer, is that so?” She replied smugly. “As I recall, the FBI is not without its resources.”

  His gaze met the agent’s with each pair of eyes burning into the other. “Neither is Aaron Casey.”

  “I’ll find them myself!” Ed huffed as he broke the contact, and crossed the room.

  He shook his head in disgust, muttering as he pulled open the door. “I thought you people were supposed to be smarter than this.”

  The beautiful FBI agent watched as the man stormed out of the room. “Shit! There goes my ride… and my best lead.”

  Scribbling her signature on the release forms, she searched her mind for any clue as to how…and where…to pick up the trail.