Power (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 8) Page 18

  Loggerman moved up the rest of the stairway and carefully stepped over the woman, who was dead. The other shooter had fled. The room to the right was empty and, as he had suspected, a window was open at the far side. He spotted the two fiddles lying on the floor but the children were gone.

  He called the others, “They are outside with the girls.” Then he eased to the edge of the open window and, keeping low, looked over the sill.

  Outside in the early sunlight, a wooden walkway led from a platform under the window. This passage stretched to the closest section of the main house where a porch and door had been constructed. Its purpose, he figured, was to isolate officials from the snarling guards in the pen below as they walked to and from the barn to the headquarters offices in the mansion.

  He heard no noise from the dogs and assumed Doctor Mike’s drugs had put them to sleep.

  Stephanie entered the room behind her father. She said, “Where are they?”

  “Are you all right?” he asked, turning form the window to touch her arm.

  “Yes, I think so.” She crouched beside the Coast Guardsman who pointed his submachine gun toward the window.

  She said, “I can’t think about her now. I guess I always knew she was not my friend. I just hoped I was wrong about her.”

  Loggerman nodded. “I did the same for many years when I was living with you in Africa. Then I realized she was hopeless. I regret, though, letting her take you away. I was weak.”

  He looked out the window again.

  “No, she had power at home. I think even in those days Cole Tinker helped her hurt you.”

  “They took the children,” he said.

  Stephanie nodded slowly. She reached for the fiddles. As she lifted the instruments, she saw the smashed bridges and torn strings. “These people I now realize are animals, all of them. They’d have to be to participate in this nightmare.”

  “We’ll get them back,” Loggerman said as she handed him one of the broken polished instruments. “Scotty did not deserve this.”

  “We’ve got to follow them,” said the Coast Guard soldier. “My guess is they are going for the plane.”

  In the darkness a large engine started.

  “The floatplane,” said Loggerman.

  They went through the window and started out on the platform.

  A round crashed by Loggerman’s head and ripped off one of the barn clapboards.

  “Get down,” he said. They dropped to their stomachs on the wood platform, guns pointing ahead.

  The Coast Guardsman fired his MP7, rounds moving quietly through its silencer. A woman screamed. She fell sideways through the railing of the walkway. Her scream ended in a thump as her body hit below in the pen of sleeping animals.

  Loggerman said, “Keep up the fire. I’ll have to get the one left out there.”

  The Coast Guard’s fire began again. Pieces of wood flew into the air. In the distance to their right, a light glimmered in the shade of the far trees, then went out.

  “Airplane door was just opened. Someone is getting ready to fly out of here. We’ve got to stop the airplane takeoff,” said Loggerman.

  In the dawn light over the lawn leading out from the mansion, they saw a small man pulling two children toward the plane. A rectangular case was strapped to his left shoulder by a strap.

  He whispered, “Don’t shoot the man. You might hit the children. I’ll go after them after I get down to the lawn. You wait here to cover me. Shoot if you get a bead on anyone on this walkway.”

  He saw a flash in front of him. A shot clipped the wood next to his head. He pulled up his pistol and tried to fire back. The gun was empty. He had left his submachine gun back in the room. He knew he had to get better cover. The Coastguardsman fired over Loggerman’s head at the target, keeping the opponent down.

  The young morning air became silent. He heard a creak in the wood floor ahead of him. The shape of a man was lying prone on the wood boards. The killer’s green uniform almost hid him against the dark shady boards. Loggerman moved slowly along the side of the walkway. He leaned over and peered underneath, searching the support struts. A series of wooden beams held the structure and he thought they might hold his weight. Below, the dogs were still asleep.

  Inside the airplane in the distance a light went on again. Loggerman saw a figure moving the controls. He recognized the slim body of Spire.

  Stephanie crawled up beside him and said, “The bitch is getting away. The two of them are escaping together with the kids as hostages.” She raised her submachine gun and took aim.

  Loggerman pulled the gun down. “No. We’ll get them soon.”

  He moved over the side and managed to get his feet on one of the support struts underneath.

  Then he moved forward, holding on to the walkway above. He had to spot the man from beneath. He thought, Where could the bastard be hiding?

  “Loggerman!” A voice spoke from the darkness.

  He recognized the demanding tone. It was Ferrars. He tried to see in the weak sunlight the glint of the jewels on his fingers.

  He knew where Ferrars was located. The man was lying on the flooring above, not more than ten feet away.

  He said nothing. He hoped the soldier behind him would understand the play. He did.

  “You are surrounded. Through away your weapon,” came the steady voice of the government man.

  Ferrars did not know where Loggerman was. He only knew where the soldier was.

  Ferrars fired again toward the barn. A piece of clapboard fell from the wall to bounce off the walkway and slap into the dog pen below. One sleeping animal gave a grunt when the clapboard hit his body. Otherwise, the dogs made no sound.

  Loggerman climbed slowly toward Ferrars, trying to make no sound. From what he could discern, Ferrars had not moved.

  Loggerman heard the sound of Ferrars moving his arm and ejecting a magazine from his pistol. The man sighed as he pulled on his trouser pocket. The replacement magazine pulled loose from the threads of his cloth pants, trapping the metal. Ferrars grunted from the exertion. The magazine clicked into place.

  Loggerman had reached a position below his opponent. He could smell the man’s sweat. He heard the quick breathing of his target above him. Loggerman spotted the cracks between the boards of the walkway. His fingers traced them, estimating which cracks were nearest the chest of Ferrars. He moved closer to the noise of breathing.

  His mind flickered to his grandfather’s lesson, so long ago when he was a child in Maine. “Don’t think about the target. Your head will know where he is. Just will your arm to throw the blade as it knows how in your body and muscles. Your practice will take over. Let your body do the warrior task.”

  The knife was comfortable in his hand. He felt the ridges of leather on the grip.

  He stabbed upward through the crack. He felt warm blood flowing on his cheek.

  Ferrars yelled angrily from the sudden pain and staggered upward. Bursts from the MP7 at the barn window tore into him. Ferrars stood in a death dance, his fingered rings of expensive jewels sparkling in the dim light, clouding as his blood flowed over them. He fell backward, eruptions of red blood from tiny volcanoes across his chest, mingling with a chasm from the knife, all spurting hatred and dreams of power, weak sprays declining to mere trickles.

  His body smashed against the walkway’s railing. The splintered wood flew out into the air and he fell to the ground below. There he twisted once before dying, his jeweled hand standing in rigor over his head in the air, a salute to nothing and no one.

  In the distance, the two girls had fought back. They were screaming and pulling against Whithers. The plane had already been untied and was drifting away from the shoreline. Open water was between it and its small mooring dock

  As Loggerman and Stephanie ran toward the plane, they could hear Whithers. He shouted to Spire, the pilot, “Wait. I’m right here. I’ll get them in.”

  Still too far away, they watched Whithers splash into the water and reach t
he side of the accelerating aircraft. Holding the edge of the open door, he managed to push one of the girls into the back of the plane. As he reached for the second, she pulled back, throwing him off balance. He fell backward into the water. She broke free.

  An old man, white hair falling off his face, grabbed the foot of the girl in the cargo area. He pulled her back into the water. She screamed and the old man said, “You calm yourself. It’s just your old Gramps, come to take you home.”

  Gramps moved away, holding the girl by her waist. Her sister moved in the other direction, shouting, “You get away, you hear me now. You get away.”

  Withers fell into the water, trying to grab the slippery metal of the airplane float. He was treading deeper water and flailing, trying to stay above.

  Loggerman and Stephanie ran to the shoreline near the plane. Loggerman jumped into the river, reaching out for Whithers. The accountant had unstrapped his suitcase. It was in his left hand and he used it to beat weakly at Loggerman’s head. Loggerman slapped the left side of Whithers’ face and the man crumpled.

  The case floated toward shallow water.

  Stephanie had the other girl in her arms and pulled her to shore. “You’re going to be all right, honey,” she said. With her other hand she salvaged the floating case of Tinker Institute computer files. She was smiling, as though her life had been infused with goodness to overcome the evil she had been disguised with.

  Beside her, Gramps, also happy, stomped, splashing water, up onto the grass filled shoreline, carrying the other girl.

  Stiles reached out, her face livid with violence, and pulled the door. It slammed shut and the engine roared higher in speed.

  “Shoot out the engine of the plane,” Loggerman hollered to his Coastguardsman on shore as he climbed on the float. He struggled to get the door open.

  Rounds sparked against the surface of the airplane. As Spire turned the plane into the channel, the right wing caught in the lower branches of a mimosa tree growing close to the shore. The left wing dipped as the pilot applied power to wrench it free from the entangling branches. Loggerman was thrown off the float as it rose, off balance, into the air from the river surface.

  The Pilatus Porter engine screamed as Spire tried to get control. The right wing began to crack with the strain of the tree holding it. The plane moved further from the shoreline, leaving Loggerman behind and bouncing up and down in the water as Spire worked the throttle and rudder.

  A broken fuel tank spurted gallons of high test fuel into the nearby air and water. Loggerman saw this and clambered back toward the shoreline. He looked back once and saw the rigid face of Spire. Bullets tore at the plane as the Coast Guardsman continued to empty his magazines.

  The plane exploded.

  Through the door window, Loggerman saw Spire’s mouth form into a hideous image of terror. Then she was lost in the ball of flame forming over the river shoreline, lighting trees and even the water surface in brilliant heat.

  Whithers sat on the grass and watched the plane burn. The silver colored Tinker case had been placed securely on the grass far from where he sat. Loggerman kneeled and lifted its top. Whither let his hands slide back on the grass as though he still had the power to touch the box.

  Loggerman lifted a storage disk.

  The little man’s hands fell palm upward to the ground. He said, “No more blinks, don’t you understand?”

  He began to cry.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Tuesday

  They were gathered in Captain Jimmy’s stateroom on the Niger River. The ship shone in its blue colors and stack with the large H. Through the portholes the Chesapeake Bay was sunlit with a beautiful hue of green blue stretching out to the channel to the east. In a few hours the boilers would send steam to the compound turbines. The propeller would turn to carry them back to Africa, at seventeen knots, all holds filled, all crew aboard.

  Loggerman sat with Stephanie and Eddison, coffee in front of them on the cabin table as the President’s television speech began. The handsome President sat forward in his West Wing office, as the camera recorded his talk. This man was not known by Loggerman. He had been elected in a corrosive election, one pitting ideas of caretaking discussions among the contestants. Loggerman had not voted. It had not been an election Loggerman enjoyed. His work in Africa had developed old-fashioned ideas of self-reliance, ideas which were not popular in the speeches of these candidates.

  The President was an academic, devoted to building a more perfect and undivided country and his ideas were kind if idealistic. Essentially he spoke often of making the rich poor and the poor rich with a goal of an economic equality among citizens. Who would deign to pay for the kindness was an intriguing question. It was the same question in most plans of this kind and fraught with interminable arguments from all sides. To Loggerman, this proposed goal, if adopted, would be ideal for any man like a Tinker to enter and prosper. He sensed the country’s problems with internet leaders and mobs were not over with the demise of Cole Tinker. If anything, the country was open to more Tinkers in different dress in the future.

  A country open to supporting its citizens without charge would certainly enervate a free energy prophet.

  The man, his gray suit matching his thinning hair and his intense but sympathetic eyes, spoke softly.

  “Welcome my friends.” He paused. “Today I want to inform you a serious threat to our country has been defused by our national security officers. Our Attorney General is rooting out any suspects for prosecution.

  “The country has returned to some sort of normality. The National Guard working with the FBI and local police have regained control of our cities and subdued mobs on the streets. Some cities are still having difficulties ending blackouts and getting their electric power up and running. Any participants found associated with the Tinker Institute either on the street or in the organization’s city offices are being arrested and taken into local FBI offices for questioning.

  “Cole Tinker, let us be fair, was a man enthused with purpose. He spoke to all of us of justice. Unfortunately, like many leaders in our modern world, he was corrupted and killed by some of his followers. The pain thus created to his believers has harmed the glimmers of hope in everyone.

  “The only way to mitigate blame is to assign it to everyone. Blaming one group or one man over another achieves no pleasure. Instead it fosters the unending hatred of the future survivors of the blamed.”

  “In the coming days of reflection on the causes of this terror, we will seek to help energy users. Solutions will be sought and valued. All will be considered and used in our democratic discussion as our country tries to serve its citizens. I promise you, criminal action and murder to force any solution will not be part of the future of energy in our land. Can we have free energy? Perhaps, but we must consider all sides of the question so no one is hurt by new policies.”

  As he listened, Loggerman saw in his mind his former wife’s dead face once more, lying in a pool of blood and white scattered pearls. He wondered if she could have accepted these words of her President. Perhaps she might have done so if she had not become a part of a scheme to defraud the very people she professed to love. The deep rooted sadness had followed her all her adult life. The red glow of her childhood hatred fueled her defeat to the end.

  When the President finished, he smiled in a mysterious way, as if he knew he had not told the whole story. When the video faded to a commercial, he was still grinning as if he were everyone’s next door neighbor.

  Many in River Sunday had died espousing their belief in Cole Tinker or, more importantly, their fear of him. Fear led them to stay and die rather than escape. The Tinker Institute itself was now empty except for the squad of black vehicles from the FBI. Government agencies sent professionals to investigate the remains of the Tinker Institute enterprise. Grim faced men and women came and went. The street mobs and the locations of Tinker followers had disappeared. Many of the volunteers had been found. All the records were be
ing studied. Yet, all these experts were quick to admit the fear was still there. Someday these fans and new initiates numbering in the millions would attach to another leader social media and rise up again.

  The fat man who had been a frequent but shadowy visitor to the compound had been followed since he was first picked up in video surveillance. Eddison found he was an international broker of petroleum products and many times was involved in selling black market products. His arrest provided an insight into the financial arrangements of Ferrars and Spire which extended into procurement of fuels as well as investment strategies in the financial markets. Most members of the Tinker community were forced to buy Tinker supplied fuel giving more income to the Tinker Institute.

  The most hypocritical finding of the investigators provided data showing almost no free energy was ever provided by the Tinker member firms after paying membership fees and buying Tinker fuel. The members stated they were forced to participate to save their facilities from sabotage by the Tinker inspired mobs. Yet none used the cheap fuel for free energy and usually pocketed the profits themselves, after reimbursing Tinker Institute shares.

  Cole Tinker’s body had finally been returned to River Sunday. A local funeral home had been hired by the town to proceed with his burial. Little if any fuss was made and the hearse carrying the body to the town cemetery was not advertised. Even so, many people stood silently along the street as the black car travelled solemnly thorough the town.

  The eyes of the men women and children standing on the main street followed the body as though they were actors in a play trained to show no emotion. It was simply a goodbye to a powerful neighbor and a good riddance to a cloud of fear he held over the citizens. Yet the lack of feeling indicated a deep fear he might come back to life and catch them. A day later, the sheriff was also buried at his family plot. His funeral was done at night by his brother Ben and some of the family.