Forty
The gate had not been engineered to stop the kinetic
mass of a three-ton vehicle moving at high speed. Steel locks and hinges
snapped under the impact. Two halves of chain link fence spiraled high
into the air. With his good hand on the wheel, John thoughtlessly reached
for the handgun he had tossed to the seat beside him. Sharp pains lanced
up the unresponsive fingers of his ruined hand like hot needles.
"Damn!"
Abruptly, he steered the car off the drive. He did
not do so deliberately. For a brief moment, his left arm came to
independent life. The car lurched violently over the uneven lawn. Before
he could steer the car back onto the road, the shockwave of an explosion
beneath the concrete drive sent broken stone and raw earth slamming into
the side of the car and then raining down from above.
A manually detonated land mine planted beneath the
road surface was John's best guess. Left to his own resources, he would
have died in the explosion. Marlene had known of the mine's presence in
some fashion and had just revealed to him abilities that went far beyond
reading minds and inducing hallucinations.
She had taken possession of his body.
Renewing his grip on the wheel, he floored the
accelerator and lined up the lighted mansion with the Jag's hood
ornament. The first chatter of automatic weapon fire and stroboscopic
muzzle flashes came from directly ahead. Bullets plinked their way
through sheet metal. One and then two bullets snipped their way through
the windshield, leaving holes and webbed fractures in their wake.
Too many obstacles blocked a clear path to the front
entrance of the mansion. Instead, he put the car on a collision course
with a line of large cement planters and a carport. He let go of the
wheel long enough to stuff the handgun into his belt with his good hand,
and then bailed from the roaring car seconds from disaster.
The planters exploded upon impact. The car rolled
onto its side and bounced. Momentarily airborne, it took out the supports
to the carport. The roof collapsed with a thunder and threw up a cloud of
dust.
John rolled to a stop on the lawn. He remaining
prone and covered his head, waiting out the rain of earth and torn
vegetation. Armed men converged on the wrecked car, giving him the
opportunity to rise to a crouch and slip slowly and unnoticed around the
side of the house.
Here, too, gunmen converged on the house from further
out on the grounds. He had his first target lined up in his sights when
Marlene's gentle voice distracted him.
"John, they cannot see you."
While the gunmen emptied clips of automatic firepower
into the Jag, John went around the back of the house. He figured he'd be
tripping infrared motion detectors and passing through the views of closed
circuit security cameras and hoped the Marlene somehow had those covered
as well. Sodium vapor security lights were flickering to life in the
night. Doberman Pinchers bounded across the lawns, posing more of a
threat to the estate's own security force than the invading army they
imagined.
One of several doors along the broad backside of the
house hung open. John ducked inside and rushed through a stainless steel
kitchen. He flattened himself against a wall as men passed in both
directions without challenging him.
He ducked into a room at random to take a breather
and found himself in a den paneled in rich wood tones. As he closed the
door behind him, pale gray eyes looked up from behind a desk. Terror took
form on the thin, pinched face of Orville Kahl. A phone tumbled from his
hand to the rug.
It had to be more than sheer coincidence. Marlene
had guided his way. John raised his pistol to Kahl's head and put enough
pressure on the trigger to know he could kill the man should he decide to
do so.
"To kill him now would be a grave mistake,"
Marlene warned in soft tones. "He will destroy himself soon enough."
He didn't have to be told that murder was a bad
idea. Kahl was not invincible no matter the depth of his treachery.
Blackburn and Chambers were the foe to be reckoned with. If his impulsive
behavior and Marlene's protection failed to neutralize at least one of the
two, he saw little chance for Marlene's naive hope of life returning to
normal for the Hartman family on the outer slope of Spruce Valley.
Orville Kahl put his hands over his head and slowly
sank out of sight behind the desk, whimpering as he went. John took a
moment to catch his breath, then retreated and continued along the
hallway.
The excitement in the house intensified by the
moment. He could hear the sound of approaching sirens in the distance.
Helicopters chopped at the air somewhere over the estate. The state police had invaded Eagle Junction
investigating the disappearances, John remembered. They'd be responding
quickly to the commotion.
John went down a flight of stairs in search of the
center of security operations. He cut through an empty den, wove his way
between three pool tables, and dropped to his knees to look around the
corner of a rear door. A quick glance showed him a dark connecting hall
and a metal door opened at the far end. Voices carried in the relative
silence.
Two men sat before a series of monitors in a cement
block room. He slipped on by and entered a room filled with
weight-lifting equipment and several bunks. Two men turned as he entered
the brightly lit room. One rushed him on sight.
John swung his pistol in a vicious arc and caught
Lucas Chambers alongside the jaw. Chambers crashed to the ground,
stunned. The second man was Neil Blackburn. Blackburn drew a handgun
from his shoulder holster with lightning speed.
Both pistols cracked at the same instant.
Blackburn's flew from his hand. A gout of blood and bits of flesh and
bone accompanied the spinning weapon on its way to the floor. Neil
Blackburn clutched his shattered right hand by the wrist, dropped to one
knee, and glared at him in a wild blend of anger and horror.
Sensing an attack approaching from the rear, John
turned in time to sidestep a swung fist. As the momentum of his attacker
carried him by, John delivered a blow to the base of the skull that would
have disabled had it been delivered with his uninjured hand. Blinding
pain burst up his arm, warning that he had broken delicate bones and torn
the scar tissue of frozen finger joints.
Chambers dived, rolled, and lashed out with his right
foot to sweep John from his feet. John skipped over the swung foot and
had a split second within which to deliver a retaliatory blow. It was a
clumsy chop with the edge of his left hand that nevertheless shattered
Chambers' nose and sent a gout of blood streaming to the floor.
Chambers stepped back, breathing heavily through his
mouth and choking on his own blood. "You fucking traitor, Hartman. I
swear to God I'll kill you."
John's entire right arm had become dead meat, and
Chambers was quick and precise in his counterattack. John's field of
vision sparkled as he caught a blow to the jaw and then knuckles to his
solar plexus and throat. Either blow would have taken him out had they
connected with more accuracy. But Chambers was drowning in his own blood,
and John was surprised to discover how strong his left arm had grown over
the course of the summer. Chambers still had him pegged as a right-handed
fighter.
Chambers swung with his feet. John found himself to
be at least as well coordinated and a tad quicker. His hand-to-hand
skills had deteriorated, but neither had either Blackburn or Chambers been
maintaining the sharp edge to their own murderous talents. He caught
Chambers off guard twice and both times sent him slamming against a wall
with resounding impact. In his haste to deliver a lethal blow, Chambers
lowered his guard once too often. Using the man's own momentum, John
finally managed to grab Chambers wrist, and with a twist and a pivot,
popped the shoulder from its socket. Chambers went down screaming.
John retrieved his fallen pistol and put the barrel
to Blackburn’s forehead. "Are you dead, or can we deal?"
Blackburn stared at John's own ruined right hand. He
looked up in disbelief, swallowed hard, and gave a frantic nod. "Yeah, I
think we can deal. Lucas and I discussed it on the way here."
"Lucas discussed it?”
Blackburn ventured a bloody grin. “He never did like
you much. I’ll put him on a leash.”
“But there’s a way out of this without one or more of
us getting killed in the process?”
Blackburn ventured a nod. “Won’t be easy, but I know
a way. When the time’s right.”
John slipped out of the room to be confronted by a
pretty Asian girl with a bruised face and heavily glazed eyes. She groped
for him like a sleepwalker. "Take me with you," she whispered in a badly
slurred voice. "Please, I will do anything for you..."
John had no reserves left to deal with her. Blinded
by the pain in his right arm, he slipped by the girl and hurried back
through the house to the rear entrance. He rushed into the night and
discovered that it had started to rain. With a moan of unutterable
relief, he turned his face to the sky and let the cool shower wash the
blood from his face.
Two helicopters throbbed overhead, their searchlights
sweeping over the grounds. Angered voices roared from amplified
speakers. Masses of colored lights flashed at the gate. State Police.
Sheriff Gene Packerson's deputies. The fence surrounding the property had
suddenly become a prison containing Kahl's own security forces.
"They are all looking for you," Marlene said.
"We must retrieve David and find a place to hide before the search
broadens."
John's legs felt too shaky to go anywhere. He backed
against the side of the house and slid to the ground. One of sleek, black
Dobermans approached with a whine and a furiously wagging stub tail. The
muscular animal crouched, inched itself along on its belly, and rested its
head in John's lap.
John ran his hand over the animal's hide in
astonishment. "I never had a dog," he said, feeling strangely sad and
lost. "I've always wanted one."
"So has David," Marlene reminded him.
"They bark all night."
"But he likes you."
John was puzzled. "Why would he like me?"
"You've been hurt, but he senses no fear in you.
He respects you profoundly, and he's very lonely. The kennels are a place
of torment."
"Do you really want David to have a Doberman?"
"I used this dog to keep several men away from the
house. We have established a rapport with one another."
"Friends for life?"
"That's what friends are," Marlene said.
"They become a part of you."
John thought about it. "Enemies, too."
"I am impressed by your insight."
"Did you see what I did to Blackburn? I shot him in
the hand. Did you do that?"
"I did nothing."
"You kept me from killing Kahl."
"John, I did not interfere. You are simply less the
killer than you believe."
Someone called an all-clear from the house. Kahl's
security forces began to cluster in the front yard to deal with the state
police and Gene's deputies. John struggled to his feet and decided to try
for the long walk back to the Ridge. Taking Marlene at her word that he'd
not be seen, he started off across the open grounds toward the front
gate. The dog, if no one else, followed his progress, trotting close on
his heels and zigzagging back and forth to take in the scents of the
night.
Nobody made eye contact with him when he squeezed
between the gate and a white patrol car with its lights flashing. No one
bothered with an escaping guard dog. John wove his way through the
blockade of cars and uniformed men and retreated to the trees in search of
the dark trails that would take him home. He had lost his flashlight.
The intense pain in his right hand brought tears to his eyes, but the path
at his feet seemed to glow in the darkness, and he followed it home when
it dawned on him that Marlene was lending a hand.
He reached the Ridge. Lantern-wielding uniformed
officers of one kind or another dotted the descending outer slope of the
valley, blocking the final few hundred yards of his journey. Gene
Packerson's car was parked at the house.
"David is safe," Marlene said in response to
his sudden alarm. "I will bring him to you."
"And then what?"
"The cabin, of course."
John was more than a little startled. The mirror's
version of his dead wife was convincing, if nothing else.
John found a place to rest in the grass and sat
cross-legged in the dark, cloaked in an unpleasant haze of pain and aching
muscles. The Doberman came up to him whining and proceeded to wet down
the side of his face with a soft tongue. It lay at John's side, radiating
animal warmth like a dark sun, noisily panting and filling the air with
a canine equivalent of halitosis.
John dreaded the long walk to the cabin tucked away
deep within Spruce Valley, but his old touch of survivalist paranoia had
come in handy after all. Early in their marriage, Marlene had dismissed
out-of-hand his old fantasies of approaching apocalypse. But they had
both been nature lovers and construction of the secret cabin had been
their justification for spending long summer weeks together in the
wilderness. It startled him to realize that he and Marlene would be
making good use of the cabin after all. An apocalypse of sorts had
fallen, just as he had foreseen.
He drifted into a pain-filled fugue of partial
consciousness, only slowly brought back to alertness by a strident voice
crying out in the near distance. "Dad! There's a big dog here!" A small
hand smacked him urgently on his shoulder. "Dad, are you okay? Did you
get beat up?"
John looked up at the boy in the dark and grinned.
"What do you think?"
David gave him a wane smile. "No way. You kicked
someone's butt."
"Two butts. They deserved it."
"Don't encourage him, John," Marlene's chided from
nearby. John looked around and saw with complete astonishment an image of
her dressed in camouflage fatigues.
"Where did the dog come from?" David said, his voice
rising the scale of excitement. "It's a Doberman, Dad! Can I keep it?"
After everything he had put his son through? "Damn
right you can keep it."
David was beside himself with joy. John kept an eye
on the animal until he was certain the vicious looking canine thoroughly
enjoyed having a ten-year-old hanging on his neck.
"What's his name?" David wanted to know. "Can I call
him Dobbie?"
John fought his way to his feet and held back a moan
of deepening misery. His right hand had become a livid mass of fire.
"I can help with that," Marlene said.
John remembering the eerie sensation of his left arm
jerking the steering wheel of the car. She had hinted at an ability to
invade a human body as easily as she could infiltrate and manipulate a
mind.
"I can alleviate as much of the pain as would be
prudent," she said.
"Be my guest."
"Are you sure?"
John sighed wearily. "Yeah. You scared the bejesus
out of me doing my driving for me, but I'm really, really sure."
The pain in his hand faded away, all but a dull
throbbing that would serve as a reminder of his injuries. John rose to
his full height, filled with startling new energy. The aches and pains in
the rest of his body evaporated, leaving him acutely alert to the night.
Even his fatigue was gone.
"How long can you keep this up?" he asked hesitantly.
"I can keep it up, but you must rest when we reach
the cabin."
"No argument. I'll rest when we reach the cabin."
David's eyes lit up. "Are we going to the cabin?"
"Just like old times," John said, trying to hide his
despair. The cabin would give him a respite. It would solve none of his
rapidly accumulating problems. "Lead the way, son."
David turned eagerly toward the dark slope, then
looked worriedly over his shoulder. "I don't remember the way."
"Up or down?"
David chimed laughter. "Don't be silly, Dad! Down!"
John gestured toward the depth of the forest. "Lead
the way."
"Come on, Dobbie!" David cried out, and it concerned
John that the men on the slope might hear, at least until he caught
Marlene’s patient smile.
John brought up the rear behind the boy and his dog,
accompanied and comforted by Marlene's image at his side.
"I made a mess of things," John said after having put
the first mile behind them in the dark night. "Is it going to get out of
hand?"
"It would be wise for you to resolve as much as you
can on your own. I will help resolve what remains."
John was amused by the confidence in her tone of
voice. "Is that a one hundred percent ironclad guarantee that we're going
to get out of this in one piece?"
She was silent for a time. "I must find a way to
undo the damage that has already been done."
"The mirror has no limitations. You told me so
yourself."
"But I am just your wife, John.”
