Amazon Roulette

by C. M. Gleason

  Her voice rose in excitement as she showed him the tennis ball, and Boris went on full alert. Even his happy, panting tongue retracted as he got serious again. He went still and stiff, yet fairly quivered beneath his fur.

  “Ready?” she asked, and then whipped the ball into the trees.

  Boris was off like a flash, streaking into the forest as Marina watched like a proud mother. She’d handled and helped train other dogs on search and rescue/recovery missions, but Boris was the first one she’d worked with herself from puppyhood. Not coincidentally, he was the best partner she’d ever had.

  It was pure luck that Bruce and the rest of the Michigan-Ohio Search and Rescue Team had been up here with her and Boris in Northern Michigan, where she still occasionally vacationed, even though her father was dead. She, Bruce, and the rest of their team all been doing a training session for a local SAR group that wanted to obtain their Type II designation from FEMA.

  When Granger and McElroy hadn’t returned in time for dinner the night before, Mrs. Granger had begun trying to contact them, and then got the sheriff involved (as it turned out, he was her brother, so he could hardly say no even though the couple had only been out of contact for a few hours). Sheriff Tollefson was currently conferring with Danny, the communications manager, who was simultaneously talking with Bruce over the radios.

  “How’s she doing?” Marina asked one of the medics, gesturing to McElroy, who was on the other side of the small clearing that had become Command Central.

  A portable solar light that was quickly becoming unnecessary in the dawn illuminated the collection of crates, plastic storage tubs, and tables. The sheriff was acting as incident manager, but since he didn’t have much experience in cave rescue, he’d deferred to Marina and Bruce in most of the planning and execution.

  “We’re waiting for helo, eh,” said the paramedic. He spoke in the familiar Upper Peninsula accents, with an emphasis on initial syllables. “She’s got a fractured tibia and two ribs, and’s little dehydrated with hypothermia. We made her as comfortable as possible, eh, but we’ve got no choice but to wait for air transport.”

  Marina nodded. There was no easy way to transport an injured woman with broken bones over these rugged hills and small mountains in the middle of nowhere. The closest road was one of those primitive, two-track paths, and it was three miles away. Aside from that, hopefully they’d need the medevac copter for Matt Granger as well. The alternative wasn’t worth thinking about.

  “There’s been a delay them taking off from Marquette General or they’d’ve been here by now,” added the paramedic. His th’s sounded more like d’s. “Some big blackout hearing about, coming up from St. Louis.”

  “St. Louis? That’s hundreds of miles from here.”

  The medic shrugged. “Ya, I know it. But a big grid went down and it’s causing havoc with air traffic control all over the country.”

  Marina picked up Boris’s tennis ball and threw it again. “Do you mind if I talk to McElroy?” She wanted to see if the young woman had any sense as to how close her boyfriend had been standing to her when the rocks came down. If they were holding hands, for example, that was not going to be a promising bit of information.

  “Knock yourself out, eh,” he replied.

  McElroy was lying on a stretcher that had been set up on a stand so the chill from the ground wouldn’t seep through the pallet. Several blankets had been layered over her, and Marina knew at least one of them would have a built-in heat pack.

  The woman opened her eyes when Marina pulled up a campstool to sit next to her. “Matt?”

  Marina had to shake her head soberly. “We’re still digging. They’re waiting for air transport for you. How are you feeling?”

  “Not so good.” She pressed her lips together as if to collect her strength. “Thank you for finding me.” Her words were slow and low, but audible. “Please find Matt.”

  “We’ll find him,” Marina told her. Not sure what condition he’ll be in, but we’ll find him. “Boris told me he’s there, and it’s just a matter of time. Boris is never wrong. Kendra, can you remember how near he was when the cave-in happened? Were you holding hands or touching at all?”

  McElroy moved her head in what seemed to be negation. “No. He tripped over something…and when he fell, he bumped against the wall. And then…it all came down.”

  Marina’s heart sank. If he’d triggered the avalanche, then it was likely he was buried beneath all of that rubble.

  “I told him…I wanted to go back.” McElroy rolled her head on the thin pillow again, her face filled with pain and misery. “But he found…the cave. A guy we met while hiking…told him about it. And Matt had to find it. He had to…look inside.” Her lips formed a weak smile. “He thinks he’s…Indiana Jones.”

  Marina nodded with understanding. “That’s how I became interested in caving,” she said, and reached for a bottle with a long straw. It contained warm herbal tea that would not only hydrate McElroy, but raise her temperature as well. “I’ve done archaeology in caves as part of my anthropology studies.” In doing so, she’d traveled everywhere from Myanmar to Costa Rica to Spain…not to mention Siberia. Her insides tightened and she pushed away the reminder of the package sitting in her office at home.

  That unexpected trip to Siberia had been five years ago, and hadn’t been related to her studies. Firmly diverting her thoughts, she helped the young woman lift her head slightly to sip, and then lowered her back down. Then a distant rumbling caught her ears. “The medevac chopper,” she said, gesturing to the sky.

  But McElroy had more to say. “If something happens,” she said, closing her fingers around Marina’s wrist. “To…Matt…” Tears welled in her eyes, but her gaze remained fixed on Marina. “He’s the one who found it. Make sure he…gets the credit.”

  “Credit?” Marina’s interest was sparked. “What did he find?”

  “Stones. White stones. Deep in the cave. It was a big room…we were going to come back tomorrow with…equipment. He said it was a big discovery. Proof that…” Her eyes became confused. “I don’t remember. But he found it. Make sure,” she said, the rumbling growing loud enough that the others had stopped talking and were rushing to where the helo was going to land. “Make sure he…gets the credit.”

  Marina nodded. “I will. I’ll make certain of it.”

  The medics came over to prepare their patient for loading into the chopper, and Marina was more than ready to return to the interior of the cave. Finish the mission—which was hopefully still a rescue, and not a recovery—and then she’d take a look inside the cave to see what Matt Granger had found.

  All of a sudden, she wasn’t tired at all.

  FOUR

  September 21

  Chicago

  Binger Blue stretched and rubbed the nape of his neck. Sitting in a Grand Prix for twelve hours didn’t do a thing to help his messed-up back, but a PI did what a PI had to do to service his clients. He’d simply add the trip to his chiropractor onto the final bill.

  Jerome Blankenship had been inside his lover’s condo for well over five hours. By Binger’s assessment, that covered more than a couple of humps and maybe a good meal or a movie. Or else the guy had a hell of a lot of stamina. Either way, and he’d lay money on it, the man ought to be leaving anytime now. It was after seven and Mrs. Blankenship was expecting her husband for dinner at eight.

  And a status report—hopefully including the money shot—to be delivered by Binger Blue before ten.

  He trained his long-lens camera on the shaded windows of the condo’s backside, looking for signs of movement. The only reason he was able to get into this exclusive, gated golf community to stake out Blankenship was thanks to the widespread blackout that had wonked up the gate’s mechanism. Even though the power was back on after three days, the mechanism hadn’t been reset and it wasn’t working right. He had a fake groundskeeper’s ID that couldn’t be scanned, but visually it looked legit. Plus, it was near the end of golf season
in Chicago and they brought in extra help to keep up with the scads of leaves covering the course, or so Binger had learned.

  He’d gone through all the trouble because the only time he had a chance to catch Blankenship in the act was when he was coming or going from the lady’s condo. Cora Allegan’s photo in one publication or another was a weekly occurrence, so they were very discreet lovers and never appeared in public together, even innocently. And that was the reason Mrs. Blankenship had finally had to hire True Blue Gumshoe to get photos.

  Nothing yet. Damn. Was he gonna be here all night?

  He lowered the camera, and as it settled onto the small bump of his belly, he returned to his book, Harnessing the Energy Around You: Feng Shui & Chakra Secrets for Beginners. If he sat in this vehicle much longer, he’d be forced to try his hand at feng shui-ing the stained bucket seats and paper-strewn dash. Hey, maybe the big honking chip in the windshield could count as a crystal. And his half-empty Big Gulp could be the water—though standing water wasn’t supposed to be good. It had to be flowing or something.

  He was just getting back into the paragraph about clogged chakras and how to get the wheels of energy spinning again when he heard the sounds of three car doors slamming in rapid succession.

  Snatching up his camera, he looked out over the lengthening shadow from Ms. Allegan’s neighbor’s condo and straightened up in his seat. Curiouser and curiouser.

  From his vantage point in a small turnoff near the golf course, Binger peered closer and saw two—no, three—figures detach themselves from the vehicle that had just parked on the street in front of the condo. The trio started up the front walk.

  They were tall, dressed in loose white clothing, and seemed to be empty-handed. Tannish skin, blondish hair, three men maybe thirty or so in age.

  Not a pizza delivery, that was sure. Probably not Jehovah’s Witnesses. They looked too foreign in their strange clothing and weren’t carrying Bibles or anything.

  Not party attendees—not only weren’t they dressed for merrymaking, but they showed no sign of joviality, looking neither to the right nor the left as they strode up the walk lined with red and white flowers limper than an octogenarian’s dick. Apparently Ms. Allegan’s sprinkler system hadn’t been reactivated after the three-day blackout ended.

  Binger watched through the lens, slumped down in his seat now, the prickling of the hair on the top of his bare foot telling him it was in his best interest not to be seen.

  The visitors waited at the front door for a moment, two of them standing sentinel on either side of a porch the size of a card table, and the third apparently knocking. Binger scooched lower in his seat, his eyes barely seeing over the top of his dash, the camera’s eyepiece digging into the tender skin under his eye.

  The front door opened, and Binger caught a glimpse of Cora Allegan dressed in pink. Through the glasses he saw the puzzlement on her face, then the register of shock as one of the men spoke to her.

  Her hands fluttered then spread in an indication of “so what?” or “what else can I say?” and then, before they had the chance to fall to her sides, she was standing out on the card-table porch. One man’s arm was around her waist, and it was clearly not a friendly embrace.

  Binger gave a moment’s thought to the whereabouts of Jerome Blankenship, but when he did not appear and the door closed behind Cora Allegan and her visitors, he figured the married man was remaining hidden to protect himself from being caught in the act of bonking the CEO of Vision Screen Industries, who also happened to be the daughter of a US senator.

  What the hell? He realized belatedly he was holding a camera, and began to click rapidly. Not the money shot Mrs. Blankenship was hoping for, but—

  Suddenly, it didn’t matter where the cowardly and adulterous Mr. Blankenship was—for suddenly Cora Allegan was slumped between her visitors and Binger was tossing his camera aside, ready to bolt from his vehicle. He opened the door, his hand on the Colt he’d been licensed to carry for ten years and had never had to use, watching as the three hurried down the twilit walk, dragging her between them.

  He stepped out of the car, shouting to gain their attention, but before he could take two steps, something was lobbed through the air toward him. A small black item landed on the ground and, clutching the camera to his body, he dived out of the way and tumbled into a tall swath of cattails. He rolled down a gentle incline, landing in the dank, cold muck of a small swamp that was more commonly used to trap golf balls than for the habitat of frogs or turtles, and waited for the explosion.

  Silence.

  Nothing.

  The low rumble of a vehicle motor came to his ears, and Binger slapped his hands in the organic muck to push himself up. Peering over the edge of the incline, he looked around. The black object remained where it landed, on the ground ten yards from his Grand Prix, spewing out dark smoke. Well? Was the mother-effer going to go off or just sit there like a smoldering firecracker?

  He wasn’t about to get his ass blown up, so he waited. The car that had parked at the end of Cora Allegan’s walkway was gone, its taillights just disappearing around one of the gentle curves of the golf community street.

  Binger hesitated another two minutes until the smoke disappeared, and when nothing else happened, he crawled up the incline, taking care to keep his profile low.

  He tried to assimilate what he’d just witnessed: The abduction of Cora Allegan, CEO of one of the largest manufacturers of computer and television monitors in the US, illicit lover of Jerome Blankenship, president of Chicago’s Nellworth Bank, and daughter of Missouri senator Ronald Allegan.

  Right under Binger Blue’s very blue eyes.

  The door to Cora Allegan’s condo opened, and a bewildered Jerome Blankenship stood there in his boxers and t-shirt. Guess he hadn’t dressed for dinner yet. Blankenship stepped on the porch, looking about, and Binger seized the opportunity.

  He yanked off the lens cap and snapped a few pics of the man standing in his boxers on his lover’s front porch. At least Binger would close one case tonight.

  Then he slipped the camera away and emerged from the mud and cattails just as Jerome Blankenship bent down to retrieve a flat white object that looked like an envelope.

  It appeared that the abductors had left some sort of calling card.

  * * *

  Fenton, Michigan

  “Right here,” Mike Wiley said, trying not to dance with impatience as he directed the UPS driver through the back door of Wiley Amusements.

  The man in the brown shirt wheeled a large, long wooden crate into the center of the crowded shop, narrowly missing a vintage Pac-Man machine. More often than not, Wiley trucked his own pieces home from auctions or wherever he’d acquired them, but this baby had come all the way from Brazil—or somewhere down there. Bagger, his contact in California, was the one who’d found it and shipped it in, and Wiley’d been expecting it for weeks.

  He didn’t even wince as the edge of the crate jolted the table where he’d laid out all the parts for his current project—the rebuild of a Williams Dirty Harry pinball machine. Besides replacing the Magnum pistol that moved around the playfield, he was going to put in a drop target just to spiff it up a little, maybe get a few more bucks for the machine. Collectors liked the vintage ones, but they also liked them if they had a little something more. The prototypes of Dirty Harry had originally had drop targets, but when Williams went into manufacturing it, they left them out even though the software supported it. So someone was going to get a tricked-out machine.

  But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, because Dirty Harry was going to go by the wayside faster than a cigarette butt out the car window now that Wiley’s latest toy had arrived. He watched impatiently as the driver settled the crate, slid the metal tongues of the dolly out from under it, and then offered him an electronic screen on which to sign.

  He scribbled his name with the stylus and flapped a hand toward the door, already searching for the crowbar that had been on his worktab
le the last time he looked. After a few choice cuss words, he finally found it under an old table version of Galaga he’d promised to reboot for the guys over at The Shark Club (he still called it that even though it was now a microbrewery) and began to work on the crate.

  The nails screeched softly as he got the lid up and then tossed it aside, narrowly missing his favorite Lord of the Rings pinball machine. That one was his current favorite, but this sweet old machine by Bally might just replace the One Ring in his heart.

  His first look at her—Fathom—got his heart to pounding and his palms going damp. No, she wasn’t as rare as Pinball Circus by Midway (that one would have him on his knees, sweating and crying if he actually got his hands on one of the three in existence), but she was sweet.

  The green, blue, aqua, and teal colors of the undersea theme were slightly faded and the top glass was shattered in a circle at the near left corner—probably someone slammed down a beer bottle in disgust after the ball slipped through the flippers. Had to’ve broken the bottle, too, hitting it that hard. And—holy shit—was that a bullet hole in the back glass?

  Wiley couldn’t pull the crate sides away fast enough, and finally he was standing next to the unencumbered machine, able to run his fingers over a spot that was most fucking definitely a bullet hole. Clean through the A in Fathom, right through the back of the display.

  He looked at the machine with new admiration. Bagger’d told him it came from the estate of a drug lord down in Brazil or Peru—somewhere in the jungle. Guy named Rico got himself offed a while ago, and according to Bagger, they—whoever they were—were cleaning out the secluded mansion he’d been hiding away in.

  “Guess you saw a little action down there, huh, baby,” he said, smoothing his hand over the dirty glass, imagining how nifty she was going to be when he got her all fixed up. “Well, it’s a lot less exciting here in Michigan than down there in the jungle, I can guarantee you that.”