The Omega Formula: Power to Die For (Detective Frank Dugan)

by Paul Sekulich

  He expected any attack to come from the road. His eyes scanned that solitary byway, the only passage capable of carrying a large vehicle.

  An hour passed. Then three more. The sun climbed high overhead and scorched the already baked land. The rock Frank rested against offered little shade, and what it did provide made him constantly move around it to get protection from the blazing sun. As noon approached, the rock’s shade was nearly non-existent. The jacket he wore to conceal his shoulder rig was soaked through. Frank hadn’t thought it would take so long to draw Nicolai out.

  Where the hell is he?

  He wished he’d brought a bottle of water and the more he thought about the oversight, the more his tongue stuck to the roof of his tacky mouth.

  Where is that sonofabitch? Have the police or feds caught up with him?

  Frank’s cell phone vibrated.

  “Yes,” Frank said, perspiration dripping on the phone from his sweaty ear.

  “Warm enough for you, detective?” the familiar voice of Cezar Nicolai said.

  “Why do you ask that? I’m in the bar at the Wichita Country Club.”

  “Could’ve sworn you were sweating your life away behind a big rock.”

  “Can’t keep anything from you, you clever guy.”

  “Been out there a long time. Get what you came for?”

  “Naw, can’t find it. Getting ready to pack it in and head out.”

  “What’s in the little red box?”

  “Red box?” Frank said and threw a handful of dirt at an approaching spider. “Oh, you must mean my tobacco case.”

  “Come now, detective. I know you don’t smoke.”

  “Just took it up.”

  “Looked like a paper with perhaps a chemical formula on it.”

  Frank was amazed at the optical ability of Nicolai’s spy equipmet.

  “No, it’s only my Internet passwords. Never can remember them all.”

  “Got a deal for you,” Nicolai said. “Leave the little red box, and all that’s in it, by the rock where you are, and I’ll let you drive back to your motel where you can get a cool drink and take nice dip in the pool. What do you say?”

  “Why don’t you come and take it?”

  “I’ll give you a couple of more hours to think it over.”

  The phone went dead.

  “Shit,” Frank said and looked upward at the merciless sun.

  This is not turning out to be my best idea. Maybe Roland was right. I’m a knucklehead.

  Frank expected Nicolai to be watching his every move. He was banking on it. Probably had a binocular position set up where he could take in the entire area. But he knew also, whatever advantage he thought he had was gone… all but one. Nicolai spotted the tin box, as Frank wanted him to, and probably believed what he and Frank strove to find was at hand. Precious good that would do him if Nicolai killed him, but he still wouldn’t have the Omega formula.

  Two more hours in the Kansas summer sun was not a healthy option.

  Hell, two more hours here and Nicolai could walk up and take the tin box off my heat-stroked dead body.

  Frank had to get someplace where he could survive. One fact was sure. Where he was wasn’t it. He knew his best chance was to get to his car and make a getaway, but that would only prolong the ordeal with Nicolai. And he might not even make it the sixty yards to the car without getting cut down by Nicolai with a rifle. The ridge with the boulders was his only chance. It wouldn’t solve his need for water, but it would provide the cover he’d need, cover from bullets and the sun. Now all he needed to do was get there…and it was 150 feet away across open, knee-high prairie grass and crusty dust bowl dirt.

  The Marine Corps had taught Frank to crawl across such expanses without being seen. It involved sloth-like movement on one’s belly, progressing at a rate of a few feet a minute, often only inches a minute. He would have to cross the distance in about thirty minutes or risk heat prostration. The grass would help hide him, and if he smeared his body and clothing with prairie soil, it could serve as a makeshift camouflage.

  Frank dusted himself from head to foot with powdery dirt. He was sure Nicolai could observe him doing everything, including the ploy to disguise his appearance, but that was inevitable. Once he headed across the expanse he might get lucky and fall off Nicolai’s radar and go invisible in the breeze-blown, shimmering grass.

  It was time to go.

  Slinking away from the rock, flat on the ground, Frank Dugan became a human snake in the grass. He hoped this tack would fool Nicolai, but, it wasn’t fooling the wary prairie dogs. The entire surrounding colony made short, barking noises, then, in seconds, disappeared into countless burrows. He moved in a serpentine pattern at the speed of a garden slug. In fifteen minutes, he’d made it halfway. His eyes were burning from the sweat-soaked dust running into them. He had to painfully stifle sneezes which could reveal his whereabouts. Seventy-five feet to go. The goal line was in sight.

  The growing sound of a vehicle drifted up from the road behind Frank. He raised his eyes a couple of inches above the grass and peeked behind him. A State Police cruiser was roaring down the road heading toward the Impala.

  Another one of Nicolai’s cops? The bastard brought his troops.

  The cruiser came alongside the Impala and slowed to a creep. Frank dropped down low and stayed motionless. He could see activity at the road through open slits in the dry grass.

  The cruiser turned toward Frank and started to drive in his direction, but immediately dove into a grass-covered drainage ditch, its tires losing traction and throwing up thick clouds of dust.

  A hot gust of hot prairie wind blasted the side of the rise where Frank was hiding. The grass flattened and changed everything. Frank was in the open and visible.

  “Oh, shit,” Frank said and sprang to his feet running full-tilt for the boulders on the rise. Twenty feet short of the cover of the rocks, he pivoted toward the road.

  The trooper scrambled out of the disabled cruiser and faced Frank. It was the trooper who had pulled him over. He drew his pistol, aimed at Frank, and started pumping bullets downrange as fast as a human could pull a trigger.

  Chapter 71

  Frank cursed his bum luck and sprinted for the boulders. The dirt around his feet exploded with bullets and chunks of caked soil. He zigzagged and finally dove between the two closest monoliths. A slug ricocheted off the one to his right and whirr-buzzed away into the air.

  Frank found a narrow opening between two huge rocks where he could get a slotted view of the roadway and the cars below. He watched the trooper return to the disabled cruiser and open the trunk. He pulled out a large-barreled weapon that, from the distance, Frank couldn’t readily identify. The trooper went to the driver’s side of the car, opened the door and picked up a cell phone.

  Frank watched the trooper talk briefly on his cell then fiddle with something on the strange device. A moment later, that same weapon was aimed at Frank’s position and fired with a tremendous blast from its muzzle. Good God, it’s a grenade launcher! A visible projectile came soaring toward the boulders in an arcing trajectory. In the split-second before it hit, Frank knew exactly what it was, and what it could do, and flattened himself to the ground behind the larger boulder.

  The grenade hit twenty feet to the left of Frank and exploded into a hundred metal fragments, spewing in all directions at the speed of sound. The boulder saved Frank, but just when he thought he was safe, a second blast came from the road. Frank had one second to make a decision. He dove to the side of a boulder on the right of the ridge. The grenade went off near where he’d been two blinks ago. A jagged piece of shrapnel hit and embedded in Frank’s left thigh and stung like he’d been lashed with a bullwhip.

  Not knowing how many more grenade volleys he could survive, Frank decided to go on the offensive. He wriggled his way across to the far right of the ridge, out of sight of the highway. He clawed his way around the rock to get an eye on the road. He steadied his Browning on his grounde
d left palm and took aim downrange at the trooper as another grenade boomed his way.

  The shot from the Browning left the barrel at the same moment the grenade was flying up at the ridge to the left of Frank. The trooper dropped the grenade launcher and reeled backward onto the hood of the cruiser. The grenade’s deafening blast went off near enough to Frank to sting him with flying dirt. He was momentarily blinded by the barrage, but shook it off and wiped his dirty, sweat-covered face with the front of his shirt. Frank peered down toward the road as the trooper slowly slid down the hood of the cruiser and folded in a heap in front of the car’s grille.

  Frank’s cell vibrated. He ripped the phone from his pocket.

  “Why don’t you come yourself, Nicky, instead of sending these incompetents?” Frank said.

  “Soon enough, detective,” Nicolai said. “Where’d you find the little red box?”

  “Same place I’m going to put you. Under a rock.”

  “You know we could end all this on a win-win.”

  “Yeah, how so?”

  “You and I go in together on this. We sell the weapon to the highest bidder and split the money.”

  “What kind of bids you think we’ll get?”

  “We’ll start at two billion and work the auction from there. I figure it’ll go to twenty billion or more. That’s billion, with a ‘b.’”

  “Na, no deal. I got all the money I need.”

  There was a lengthy pause before Cezar spoke.

  “Thirsty?”

  “I’m good. Got a six-pack cooling in a trout stream up here,” Frank said and ended the call.

  More vehicle sounds came from the road. Another Highway Patrol cruiser pulled up behind the one in the ditch. The trooper got out and rushed to the downed man at the front of the car. Frank leaned against a boulder and took aim at the second trooper as he stood and scanned the rise. Frank squeezed the trigger back one millimeter.

  “Frank Dugan?” the trooper yelled. “Agent Braewyn Joyce sent me to find you.”

  Frank broke his aim and released the pressure on the trigger.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “She followed you out of town up ‘til you went onto Route 90.”

  “Why’d she stop?”

  “Radiator hose blew.”

  Frank found the explanation plausible, but he wasn’t about to trot out and show himself.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sergeant Yancy Burgess.”

  “Sergeant, it’s going to get jumpin' around here in a few minutes. You better watch yourself.”

  “Agent Joyce filled me in. You need backup?”

  Frank didn’t trust the trooper. He wouldn’t put any deception past Nicolai’s hired men.

  “Take cover down there where I can see you. We’ll be able to work the bad guys from two angles.”

  “Whatever you say. I can call for more help,” Burgess said and sat back in his cruiser.

  “No time. We’re it, partner,” Frank said, knowing the trooper would call it in, even if help would arrive too late.

  Chapter 72

  Frank Googled the Kansas Highway Patrol on his cell and checked up on Sergeant Burgess. He was legit, apparently, but Frank chose to err on the side of caution and keep his new ally at a distance, even though he would have risked a bullet to get one swig of water from him.

  The area was creepily quiet, and Frank shifted his eyes alternately between Trooper Burgess and up and down the lonely road. The hot air was now dead still, not even a bird chirped or fluttered by. The silence was like that of the motionless grandfather clock at Elm Terrace. It was more noticeable when absolutely nothing was heard. He was tired and desperately thirsty, but he knew he had to stay vigilant. He knew Cezar Nicolai would be.

  A distant gunshot pop came from the road below the boulders. Frank ran to check out its origin from a space between the huge rocks. He had barely reached the boulders when he heard the deafening blasts of three gunshots behind him and felt severe pains in his back, which pummeled him to the ground. The bullets had struck him below his shoulder blades. His eyes rolled back and it was all he could do to stay conscious. He soon felt strange hands tugging at his clothes and rolling him over onto his back, frisking him and going into his pockets. Frank’s gun was ripped from fingers and the magazine was ejected and clinked on the rock-strewn ground. The Browning was tossed several feet away.

  “So, this is goodbye, detective,” Nicolai said, standing over Frank’s supine body, holding a pistol.

  Frank’s eyes strained to focus, but he could see that a snub-nosed revolver was aimed directly at his head. He painfully struggled to get up on his elbows to face Nicolai, and spit the dirt and grass sticking to his mouth.

  Nicolai tucked the revolver in his waistband, opened the Prince Albert tin, and took out the yellow paper inside.

  “And this would be the answer to the Omega formula?” Nicolai said as he unfolded the paper.

  “Don’t ever use that, Nicolai,” Frank said and winced. “The world doesn’t need that kind of destructive power.”

  “This strange physics equation is the answer, eh?”

  “Ha, it’s a goddamn ruse like everything else connected to this Omega crap.”

  “I think, for once, you may have come up with something useful.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Why, rule the world, detective.”

  Nicolai stepped several feet away and turned to Frank who labored to his feet.

  “I know those three bullets are merely lodged in your Kevlar body armor, but I can’t leave without concluding our memorable friendship.”

  “I think I know how this ends,” Frank said.

  “We could’ve been great partners.”

  “Ah, a chess master asks for a draw.”

  “I’m not sensing defeat,” Nicolai said. “I know as much as I need to get the final answer.”

  Nicolai held up the tin box, then slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “What’s another few million lives to a man with no conscience?” Frank said.

  “Before you fire your service weapon, detective, you have to make careful judgments. I have no such moral constraints.”

  “You’ve got what you want. Take it and go.”

  “You’d continue to meddle in my work and cause me trouble, so, sadly no. Though I must admit, you’ve been a worthy adversary. I will miss dearly our little back-and-forths.”

  “As will I.”

  “You killed my dearest friend. And for that, there has to be repayment.”

  “He was trying to kill me. You killed my father. Where does that leave us?”

  Nicolai walked away in the direction he’d come. Frank stood and rubbed his painful back. A second later, the short man in the gray suit appeared from behind the row of boulders on Frank’s right. He was aiming a long-barreled, large caliber revolver directly at Frank’s head from a car length away.

  “Ah, the hired help arrives to do your dirty work, eh, Nicolai?” Frank said.

  Gray suit cocked the hammer and took dead aim at Frank’s face.

  “Oh, he’s not here to do my office,” Nicolai said. “No one’s going to deprive me of this victorious moment. He’s only here to be what you police call backup. Put down the gun, Mr. P. I’ll take it from here.”

  Mr. P stuck his pistol in his belt and held his position. Nicolai withdrew his revolver from his waist and cocked its hammer. Frank put his thumb on his left wrist like he was checking his pulse.

  “Time to go, detective. Your pulse rate won’t matter now,” Nicolai said and took aim at Frank’s head. “Adieu.”

  Frank pressed a button on a small device under his watchband. Nicolai’s breast pocket exploded, knocking him backward to the ground, his gun flung to the side. Mr. P made an attempt to pull out his belt-tangled pistol, but Frank was on him before he could clear the gun’s long barrel. Frank hit him with a bone-shattering punch to his face. Mr. P’s nose
crushed under the blow and blood gushed from the damage. He stumbled backward, hit his head on a nearby boulder, and crumbled to the ground.

  Thirty feet away, Nicolai recovered enough to crawl for his revolver. Frank had no time to grab Mr. P’s pistol or get to his Browning. He did the only thing available to him. He snatched a round fist-size rock from the ground as Nicolai struggled to his feet and raised his gun toward Frank. Frank hurled the rock at Nicolai like a World Series pitcher. The 95 mile-an-hour stone smashed into Nicolai squarely in the abdomen with an audible thunk. He wailed, dropped his pistol, clutched his gut, and slumped over in agony.

  Frank scrambled for the Browning as Nicolai stretched down to retrieve his revolver. Frank dove the last few feet for the Browning, grabbed it, and rolled on the ground. Nicolai managed to get his pistol up, aimed and fired three shots at Frank’s head. Two of Nicolai’s bullets whizzed past Frank’s cheek, but the third one grazed the top of his right ear. Frank fired at Nicolai’s body mass, certain he was wearing body armor, and struck him in the sternum. Nicolai faltered backward from the imparted shock that radiated throughout his middle.

  “Dumnezeu, Dumnezeu” Cezar bellowed, facing straight up at the sky. “I emptied that gun.”

  “Not the one in the chamber,” Frank said.

  Frank had evened the fight. He knew both men were out of bullets.

  Nicolai grimaced and thrust his hand into his pants pocket and retrieved a speedloader for his revolver. Frank knew the decision he made next would either save his life or kill him: go for the Browning’s magazine, or go for Nicolai.