"I know," Houston said. "But if he was just gonna pop her, he'd have done it right there on the sidewalk. She's important. She's alive. We've just got to find her while she's still that way. Any headway with the license plate number of the Papa John's delivery car?"
"Reported stolen two hours prior. I've got a friend pulling a favor for me to get the details. He should be emailing it to me soon. I'm waiting on the subpeona for Faye's phone records to go through at the moment. There's no doubt the guy used a burner cell, but maybe something else will pop. Nobody commits the perfect crime."
"Right." Carmichael glanced at his cell phone as it rang and picked up. "Yeah?"
He listened for a bit and then scribbled something down. "Thanks, man. I appreciate it."
He hung up. "They pinged her phone. I'll go take a look. Keep working on the footage."
Around half an hour later, Carmichael returned with a new print out. "Phone wasn't there, but the last known location was about a block from the accident. If he tampered with the phone, then he didn't want to ditch it in case there's evidence on there, so he likely turned off the GPS and removed the battery. Agent Dunham said she'd throw her weight around to get a subpeona for Faye's phone records within the hour, so at least we'll have a phone number on file. Any luck?"
"Yeah." Carmichael walked around to Houston's side again. "So remember when they cleared the side street for the tow truck?"
"Yep."
"We had our guys redirect traffic so no one would get impatient and mow down a pedestrian trying to get around the crash. When we radioed, we got three officers. This street block isn't under a camera, but there is one on the cross street and that's where our guys parked."
He pointed to the officers in sequence. "One. Two. Three."
He then switched the footage to a block before the intersection. It showed another officer, though his face wasn't in view. "So who the hell is Number Four?"
Carmichael stared. "Son of a bitch."
"Yep," Houston said, sitting back in his chair. "That's why no one saw. If he abducted her right after we got into the ambulance, he was wearing our blues and she might have thought he was about to escort her over to the tow truck. Then he knocked her out and slipped her inside his car before anyone even noticed."
"How, though? Shouldn't one of the shop owners have noticed?"
Houston shook his head. "It's after hours. Half of them were closed. Plus, there's an alley next to the street that leads back out the other side. If he held a gun on her and told her not to make any noise, he just pulled her through that corner and disappeared. He probably popped her in the trunk and just drove off in a different stolen car."
"Any chance we can get the tire treads?"
"I let CSU know, but the odds are low with all that filth and trash everywhere. It did give me an idea, though." Houston brandished a piece of paper. "If this guy's a professional, he might have already had a police uniform in case he needed to impersonate one of us, but my guess is he didn't bring it with him from out of town. He probably had to get one while he was in town. I left some messages with costume shops around the city to see if anything pops. If anyone fitting his description stopped by, we have another lead. Until then, I'll keep at the footage and see if I can spot him on his way out of town."
Carmichael sighed and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Has anyone been able to contact Dr. Jackson or Dr. Anjali yet?"
Houston checked his watch. "They're still on the plane to Tokyo. It's a fourteen-hour flight."
"Good thing I didn't ask the wife to wait up for me."
Houston sat back in his chair again and folded his arms. "This doesn't add up. The bad guys jumped the gun. They haven't found Baba Yaga yet. Why is someone already gunning for someone in Jackson and Anjali's friend circle to bargain for it? And why do they think the feds will even take the deal? Didn't it blow up in their face the last time they tried it?"
"You're assuming it's the same party," Carmichael said, leaning against the desk. "In the case file, they said that yakuza thug...Okay...something..." He struggled with the name.
Houston chuckled. "Okegawa."
"Right, that jackass, was the one who orchestrated kidnapping the bodyguard chick in exchange for the dragon, and the jackass got his arm blown off and fell into a coma for his trouble. The Japanese government won't go for a trade and neither will ours. They'll just track them down and get her out, so what's the end game here?"
Houston mulled it over. "Maybe it's not so much about the dragon. Maybe that's the cover."
"How so?"
He sifted through the mountain of paperwork on his desk until he had the file--quite clearly and intently stamped with Confidential across the front--and flipped some pages until he found what he was looking for. He read for a bit and tapped a finger on the paper. "The beat cop who reported the break-in at Dr. Jackson's apartment noted that the suspect left clear signs of malicious intent. He wasn't just recovering the data he needed to steal the dragon. He was sending Dr. Jackson a message."
Carmichael followed the logic. "So you think this isn't the same people who made the dragon? You think we have two different suspects."
"It makes more sense to me that way, at least. No one has the dragon, so technically, you still have a shot at getting to it first. Why implement a kidnapping before anything has happened? Why waste the money and resources and risk drawing attention to yourself unless it's personal?"
"Shit," Carmichael said. "If that's the case, this is even worse than we thought. If it was just the dragon's owners trying to get her back, Faye has a slim chance at getting released. The feds think the Sugimoto siblings are the ones behind it all, and they like to keep their hands clean. If this is Okegawa's followers..."
Houston nodded gravely. "Yeah."
"Then we'd better give Burns and Dunham the rundown."
Just as the detectives stood, Houston's desk phone rang. He eyed it, noting the suspicious timing, and held up a finger as he answered it.
"Detective Houston here."
A garbled, digitally-manipulated deep voice spoke. "Detective Houston, it's a pleasure to meet you. I am calling in regards to Ms. Worthington."
Houston's brown eyes widened and he gestured frantically for Carmichael to grab the other line. Carmichael darted over to his desk phone, clicking onto the call, and grabbed a pen and paper as well.
"What do you want in exchange for her safe return?"
"For you to follow my instructions," the voice said. "Please tell the federal agents involved with this case not to contact Dr. Jackson and Dr. Anjali until further instructed. We will choose a time and a place for the exchange, and it will not work if the two of them come running back to the States to save their friend. If we get wind that they have been informed, Ms. Worthington will pay the price. And believe me, we are watching you closely. Do you understand your instructions, Detective Houston?"
Houston gritted his teeth. "Yes."
"Very well. I will be in contact soon." The line went dead.
He slammed the phone down on the cradle. "Son of a bitch!"
Houston pressed his knuckles into the desk, fuming and shaking his head. He met Carmichael's gaze and saw equal fire in his partner's eyes. "Rob?"
"Yeah?"
"We're gonna catch this asshole if it's the last thing we ever do."
Carmichael grinned sharply. "Goddamn right we are."
13
BIG DAMN HEROES
Kamala had thought there was no scarier sound than Baba Yaga's roar.
She was wrong.
Hearing an M134 mini-gun firing at her from only several hundred feet away was a thousand times worse.
Fry barely had the time to scream for her to run before the CIA agent simply grabbed her shoulder and dragged her in the opposite direction of the dragon before an unparalleled thunderous noise filled the air.
The M134 firing didn't sound like gunfire. It was an active volcano sending a sonic boom through the air and destroyin
g everything in its path. The spotlight dragged after them by mere feet and the very ground quaked in the wake of their sprint deeper into the forest as the weapon's oversized rounds tore into the earth. She had never known true terror until this very moment. She couldn't hear anything but the monstrous roar of the machine gun.
Fry threw out an arm, screaming over the cacophonous noise. "Split up! Circle back after they've lost us! Go!"
He abruptly shifted course, running towards the right while she went left and slid down a sharp incline to lower ground. She didn't dare look behind her; just kept running as fast as her legs would carry her, tears blurring her eyesight. She realized the cold gun's flashlight was still on and grabbed at it desperately to turn it off before the helicopter would catch sight of her. She dipped between the trees and stumbled clumsily over fallen branches and roots, praying the helicopter and the man operating the machine gun lost their visual. She ran until her muscles burned and her stomach tried to ram its way up her throat.
Pregnant. She was pregnant. Pregnant women weren't supposed to break into full sprints.
Kamala threw herself down into a ditch with an old, gnarled tree hanging above it and covered her head and neck, dry-heaving a few times in the cold loam and leaves beneath her. She could still feel the vibrations through the ground of the bullets tearing into it, but the choppy sound of the rotors was farther away. She ventured to peek upward and saw the spotlight swinging through the trees this way and that, searching for her. Kamala held perfectly still and prayed harder than she ever had before.
Mercifully, the helicopter wandered away.
Kamala placed a shaking hand over her belly, sobbing quietly. "Sorry. I'm so sorry, my darling."
She counted to thirty. Then, slowly, she crawled out of the ditch and flattened herself against a nearby tree. Fry had to have been delirious. Why would he tell her to circle back around to where that insane gun and the yakuza had gathered? They were clearly outmatched. There was no hope of getting Baba Yaga back, not without an intervention.
Then it dawned on her.
It didn't take her long to retrace her steps. She could hear the helicopter long before she reached close enough to see the spotlight. It was hovering over Baba Yaga now, and she could see a complicated harness being assembled by the yakuza on the ground to slide beneath the great reptile's body so it could be air-lifted away.
"Dr. Anjali," Fry's whisper came through her suit's comm-link. "Do you copy?"
"Yes," she murmured, staying low against the ground.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. You?"
"No."
"What's the plan?"
"Our chopper is inbound, but that M134 will tear it to shreds in seconds. I'm going to create a distraction so our guys can go on the offensive and take it out. Stay hidden until the dust settles. If I don't make it, you're going to have to tell them what's going on. Under no circumstances are you to intervene, do you understand me, Dr. Anjali?"
She took several deep breaths. Could she live with such a thing? Possibly. Probably. "Yes."
Fry snorted. "That's the first reasonable thing I've ever heard you say, doc. Wish me luck, eh?"
"Good luck, Agent Fry."
Kamala turned her gaze to the clearing again. She counted four yakuza on the ground, all male, but the noise from the helicopter made it impossible for her to hear them. The darkness was too inky for her to see if there were any men left in the helicopter. She could only hope there weren't. The odds already weren't in Fry's favor. He'd need next to a miracle to--
One of the yakuza's heads simply exploded while she watched.
The other three yelled in blind panic as the corpse hit the forest floor, splattering it and the motionless dragon with scarlet. Another man fell, half of his skull scraped away as if an invisible ice cream scoop had raked across it. The remaining men took cover, hollering orders up to the helicopter. It twisted in mid-air and tilted to one side, and once more, the deafening thunder of the M134 filled the clearing. Trees simply disintegrated in its path. Kamala shuddered from where she lay in the undergrowth, her shoulders tightening with tension, her gut screaming at her to run away in case it somehow spotted her again. Not that it would help if it did. It fired two-to-six-thousand rounds per minute. Nothing could stand in its way.
By now, one of the yakuza had gotten an inkling of the direction Fry had been firing from and moved towards him steadily, pumping bullets into the woods surrounding the area, hoping to hit him or draw him out of his cover. The helicopter focused in on the spot as well, and dread filled Kamala as she watched, sure she'd see the CIA operative fall to one side, bloody and dismembered, at any moment.
Fortunately, Fry's plan worked.
The other mercenary on the ground was shouting something and pointing up at the sky, but he was too late.
There was a short, sharp whistling sound over the mini-gun's firing and then the helicopter burst into flames.
The explosion brightened the entire section of the woods for several seconds, damn near making everything as visible as it would be in daylight. The remains of the helicopter plummeted to earth right on top of the yakuza who had been beneath it. Acrid smoke choked the frigid air and flames licked up the nearby trees, splashing yellow and orange light in all directions.
The last mercenary crouched behind his cover and reloaded his rifle. Kamala saw him raise a hand to his ear. His lips moved. He was still in contact with someone. She cursed under her breath. How many more of them were out here?
The mercenary slunk between the trees in search of Fry, making a wide berth around the wreckage from the helicopter, but he stopped short a moment later. Kamala heard a second pair of rotors now, steadily growing in volume. The cavalry had arrived, and none too soon. She watched as tethers unfurled from the chopper and a couple of men rappelled down.
The lone man spat out a curse and hustled away from the clearing, knowing he couldn't hold off the enemy on his own. She watched him vanish into the darkness and then made her way back towards them. She sprayed some liquid compound onto the burning helicopter and the scorched trees surrounding it as Fry reappeared from his hiding spot and greeted the men.
"Get Baba Yaga loaded up as fast as you can," Fry ordered over the chopper's loud rotors. "They'll be back with reinforcements. Send word for a second chopper to take Dr. Anjali around to search for Dr. Jackson."
The man nodded and barked a few instructions to his companions. They started setting up a collapsible scaffold to help secure the dragon for transportation. Fry glanced about at the extra help and frowned as something occurred to him.
"Hey, where's Snow? I sent her back from the caves hours ago."
"She never made it to camp, sir."
Fry gritted his teeth. "Shit. She might've been compromised or worse."
He glanced at Kamala. "Alright, doc. I know you've got no lost love for the woman, but she might be out there with the rest of the yakuza hunting us down. If she hasn't shot off a flare or tried to contact us over the comms by now, we have to assume they've got her. I'm gonna hitch a ride, get the dragon secured, and then come back with the reinforcements. Second chopper's on its way. I have to give a status report, but I'll be back. I'm leaving these men with you in the meantime. Stay sharp."
Kamala nodded. "Godspeed."
Fry and the other men got Baba Yaga strapped into the harness and the helicopter lifted off. With some effort, the dragon's enormous body slowly drifted off the forest floor and ascended into the black heavens. The small scientist watched her until she had disappeared from sight, something akin to relief blooming through her chest.
One impossible task down.
One to go.
Not long afterward, the second chopper loomed into view and the two men helped her on. It was a disturbing sensation to be aboard an aircraft so much smaller than a commercial airplane. Her gut twisted nervously as they reeled her up on the tether and one of the men in the cabin pulled her in. Once they were inside, they gave her
a safety strap and she filled them in on the situation.
"Dr. Jackson and Juniper Snow are missing," Kamala said. "We have reason to believe the men who came to collect the dragon have them in their custody. We must move quickly. There's a chance that they'll try to move the two of them out of the forest now that we have the dragon and try to ransom them in exchange. We must get them back at all costs."
She tapped the screen on her arm and sifted through several options until she found the tracking beacon menu. The screen blurred with interference, but she could see four options: herself, Fry, Jack, and Snow. Jack's name was blacked out, but Snow's still glowed green. She selected it and exhaled as a small dot began to blip in the distance.
"Snow's tracker is still operational. She's west of us. Let's get moving."
The helicopter lurched forward into the icy night sky. Kamala took a deep breath in the cold air and set her shoulders.
"Hang on, Jack. We're coming for you."
It turned out that killer clowns were surprisingly fast and light on their feet.
Jack had no idea how long he'd been running. By now, the pain in his bruised ribs no longer mattered. He was running on adrenaline, pure and simple, because there was a clown with monstrous teeth chasing after him through the pitch black haunted forest of Aokigahara.
No matter how far he thought he'd gotten, he'd glance back and the monster clown would be just a few yards behind him and closing in. It would flash that slasher grin at him, baring its shark-like sharp teeth, and he ran faster, harder, completely consumed with blind panic.
He couldn't see much as he ran, banging his shoulders and shins on the tree trunks and roots around him, helped only by the slightest bit of moonlight in the night sky. His sickly panting filled his ears along with the sound of his lanky body all but crashing through the woods.
Eventually, he couldn't take it any longer and collapsed to the ground, gasping for air. He glanced behind him.
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