Leaving the police station I asked myself what the agreement was that had cornered the sheriff. If the professor had contacts that could have a judge sign a search warrant based on trust, I was really in trouble. Abrams wanted Whiskey and the plant, and whose fault was that? Raleigh's.
I was furious with her. I had trusted her and she had given me away to her boss.
"Well," I told myself on the way back to the store, "this is what you get when you piss a woman off". I would settle things with doctor Thompson later. There was something I had to do right away.
When I went back to the Flight Garden, my Mustangs were still sedated, flattened on the ground in haphazard poses, with their wings half open and tails curled up. I checked on each one of them. They were all okay, besides Ursus who had broken a claw during the fall. I picked them up with care and gathered them together all around their tree. The next morning they would wake up feeling drowsy and in a bad mood. And if there's anything worse than a Mustang in a bad mood, I don't know about it.
Luckily I won't be here to face them.
I went back to my office and destroyed the hard disk where the software backed up the video recordings. Then, I went to the stable and got a shovel and a plastic bag.
Half an hour later I was leaving Boise, heading south on state road 69. Before getting to Kuna I turned East, onto a country road. It was late in the evening and the road was deserted. There was a time when corn grew in that area, large intense green circles in square fields, and every hundred yards there was a farm, or a fenced area with horses or grazing cows. But after the water conservation pacts in '25, the steppe had advanced at an unstoppable pace, slowly transforming the landscape into a flat and dry land, dotted with short bushes.
The Drought had hit the farmland in our southern counties harder than in other states. The famers from that area had abandoned their land, leaving thin fences of dry wood and old unstable barns as a testimony of the past civilization. They called it the Ghost Farmland, because nobody lived there anymore.
The first to go had been the McKenzys, then the Owen brothers, and lastly Johnson and his sons. The last time I was at my uncle's farm (my cousin Francine's father), I had just started high school.
Under the van's headlights, I could hardly recognize those places anymore, and I risked getting lost several times. At one point I saw a man standing in the road, close to the entrance to an abandoned farm. It was Jean. He motioned an arm for me to follow him. I went drove the van into the open area in front of the house and got out. LeBon ran to meet me.
"Tiens, we're lucky, huh?"
"Did you see what happened?"
"From your laptop, live", answered LeBon. "Are Deirdre and the others okay?"
"Yeah, they're fine". I went around the van and opened the back door. "Give me a hand with these".
"Are they the Pitas?"
I nodded and pulled the plastic bag toward me.
"I certainly wasn't going to leave them for that bastard Abrams. Where are Whiskey and Sheela?"
Jean took the bag by the other end and pointed to the house behind him with his head.
"They're inside. You know, for being an abandoned farm, it's not really that bad".
"The farm is fine. The water is the problem".
We brought the Pitahaya to the back of the house.
There used to be a nice garden, here, I thought looking around. Now, even in the dark, I could see there was nothing left of the green grass and hedge. Bare, dry and dusty earth. In a corner, LeBon had already prepared a shallow hole next to an old oak tree that for some miraculous reason was still alive.
The trunk could function as an alternative support, seeing as I hadn't had time to take the old one from the Garden. We replanted the Pitahaya and went into my uncle's old house. In the middle of the living room, surrounded by furniture covered with plastic, Whiskey and Sheela were sleeping curled up next to each other in front of the fireplace. The flames reflected on Whiskey's scales giving the impression that his body was made of liquid gold.
"You turned on the fire", I said petting my dragons.
They were both tired and numbed by the heat of the fireplace.
"Tiens, there may not be water, here", answered LeBon, "but there's dry wood in abundance. This afternoon I took them on a petit tour in the woods, if you want to call it that, close to the farm. Pratiquement, it's an open air woodshed".
The Johnsons' woods, I thought. When I was little, my cousins and I played hide and seek there. I looked at LeBon.
"How did it go today?"
Jean took the last beers from his cooler and we sat at the old dark walnut table in the kitchen.
"It's like you said. There's enough space, your uncle even had a barn. But someone will have to bring us water every week. The good news is that the plant is a cactus", smiled Jean, "the bad news is we aren't".
"I hoped I could keep him a little while longer at Wild Dragons", I said. "I know he seems big, but after all he's just a three month old baby dragon".
"Um, it's not like the situation leaves us with many alternatives, n'est pas? That professor, that Abrams...is the same man that tried to get into the Garden yesterday".
"Yeah, and he's Raleigh's boss". I cursed. "Damn it, I was an idiot to trust her".
LeBon stopped drinking and set the beer on the table.
"Oh, Jeq, you didn't see how it ended! They had already taken you away and..."
"I don't want to know". I got up suddenly from the chair and made a fist in front of my chest. "If you have a problem with me, go ahead, come on at me. But if you go against my dragons, it's war".
"Anyway, if I were you", answered LeBon, "I would be careful. That girl knows Kung-Fu, and she has no problem using it".
I didn't stay to listen to him. It still hurt too much. I stumbled toward the living room and let myself sink into one of the old leather couches in front of the fireplace. I was exhausted. Whiskey and Sheela were snoring, puffing out of their nostrils every now and again.
For a while, I stared as if hypnotized at the flames in the fireplace. The couch had a vague smell of plastic and mold, but I would have even slept on the ground that night. I don't know how, but I fell asleep.
If I had known what happened after the accident where Langley had kicked Whiskey, and what Langley had done with his video (he had a smartphone in his hand, remember?), maybe that night I would have taken some precautions. Maybe, and I say maybe, I would have avoided being followed.
After all the effort LeBon had made to lose Tajihara's men, it was that stupid video to betray us. Langley had loaded the video online with the purpose of creating bad publicity for my store, but people had started sharing it to make fun of him. It would have been funny, if it weren't for the fact that for a few seconds you can see my face. Enough so that Raminskij and his crew, looking for a dragon breeder friend of LeBon, recognized me and got on my tracks.
THE SOUND OF A CAR peeling into the clearing woke me up with a start. I had no idea what time it was. The living room was shrouded in darkness, in the fireplace the embers were almost out. I shivered from the cold. I felt a weight on my stomach and one on my right shoulder, as if I had two boiling hot stones on me, a big one and a small one.
I checked with my hand, groping around. Jean had covered me with a blanket and Sheela and Whiskey had curled up on top of me. The car's headlights filtered through the blinds, lighting the beams on the ceiling for an instant, then they turned off.
In the dark, LeBon grabbed me by a shoulder. "They're here! They found me!"
"What? Who's here?"
I was still half stupid from the sleep. LeBon left me and went toward the window. He bent down to peek between the blinds.
"Oh, merde, putain", he groaned, his hands in his hair. "Je suis foutu".
I reached him and looked outside as well. In the dark, four men had gotten out of a black SUV. Their eyes glowed with a sinister red light. One of the men, a guy with blonde hair, was carrying a big metal tube on his shoul
der, a sort of bazooka. The guy next to him was tall, with a shaved head. I had already seen him in McCook, on the platform at the station: he had killed Dao and Herbert. Raminskij. The other two were Akimo and Andersen. My stomach knotted and my knees trembled.
"Fuck! What do we do?" I took a step back from the window. "Jean, we have to run away".
I tried moving my friend, but LeBon shook his head. He must have gone crazy.
"No, Jeq", he said. "It's my fault, it was me who brought them here. Take Whiskey and Sheela".
"What the hell are you talking about? Jean, wait!"
LeBon grabbed the handle to the front door and opened it.
"Run, Jeq. I'll stall them".
He put his hands over his head and went out toward the hit men.
Oh, courage. It's a strange thing, right? I always thought that courageous men don't exist, but only courageous moments. Moments, that is, in which a person stops running away from their fears and faces them. Jean was going through one of these rare moments. Not I. I rolled up the blanket with the two dragons in it and fled.
I ran to the back door, my hair standing straight on my head and the acidic taste of fear in my mouth. I heard Jean yell something, but I didn't stop. I ran through the porch and crossed the garden. On the right was my uncle's old abandoned barn. For a moment I thought of hiding in there, but I changed my mind right away. It was the first place they would have looked. I climbed the fence with some effort and continued running. Shaken around inside the blanket, the two dragons started getting upset and grumbling.
"Be good, guys, be good".
After about a hundred yards my lungs were on fire and I had a cramp in my side. I stopped to catch my breath, with my mouth open. The bushes around me were low, not even up to my knee. There weren't many places to hide, in that flat, desolated and damned steppe. About twenty yards away, on the left, a big dark patch covered part of the horizon. The Johnsons' woods. I ran in that direction and when I got to the first trees I collapsed behind one of the trunks. The bark was smooth and black; there weren't any leaves on the branches, even if it was only the end of August. As a shelter, those woods weren't the best, but where else could I go?
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn't stop thinking of LeBon. Why did he choose to be French right at that time?
One of Whiskey's claws scratched me on the arm, so I opened up the blanket and let the dragons out.
They looked around all grumpy about that unplanned event and hissed all their disapproval for being woken up and brought out in the cold, in the middle of nowhere.
"Shhh", I shut them up.
I tried to understand what was going on in the house. The garden in the back was silent.
Maybe they brought him away, I thought. I wiped my sweaty forehead with my hand and cursed. Damn it all, Jean, why did you do that?.
For a while, nothing happened, then, after about a minute, I saw LeBon come out into the garden, followed by the four men. Under his throat, on his t-shirt, was a dark stain that could have been blood. They had beaten him up. The five men stopped in the middle of the garden. Akimo made Jean kneel on the ground, he took out his gun and pointed it at his head.
"Mister Ports", yelled their boss, Raminskij. "You have ten seconds to bring us the dragon or we'll kill your friend".
Kidnapping
"Don't count your dragons before they're hatched"
Dragon Breeder proverb
MY INSTINCT WAS TELLING ME to take the dragons and run away, but I didn't listen to it. I couldn't let them kill LeBon. In any case, where could I have gone? If I had left the Johnsons' land I would have been out in the open, in the middle of the steppe, and the closest house where people lived was maybe in Kuna, several miles away. If I stayed hiding, sooner or later the hit men would have started looking for me, and then I wouldn't have been able to escape their bionic eyes.
Jean is right, I though petting the two dragons. We're fucked.
"Stay here, don't move", I told Whiskey and Sheela.
I covered them with a piece of blanket, then I got up. I took a deep breath, leaning on a gnarly bark, and with a slow step I came out of the woods. The hit men identified me immediately. I heard LeBon rustle and yell at me to run away, but I kept on walking. I passed the fence and Andersen came toward me in a rush. He grabbed me by an arm and tugged to make me follow him. His manners hadn't gotten any better since our meeting on the train.
"Thanks for joining our party, mister Ports", Raminskij welcomed me. "It wasn't easy finding you, you know?"
I didn't say anything. I knew begging would be useless.
The hit mens' boss smiled at my silence, pointed to the accomplice at his side, Akimo and added: "Tenji is a master at finding people, but even so he needed two months and we had to come to this shithole". Raminskij looked at the desolated Ghost Farmland landscape, then he spit on the ground and went back to staring at me, his friendly expression turned into a ferocious sneer.
"Now, before I shoot your friend, tell me where the dragon is".
I stole a quick glance at Jean. His nose was bleeding and his lip was cut, but he was okay.
"Dragon? What dragon?"
Andersen kicked me behind my right knee, making me fall on the ground. Then he took me by the neck from behind, like a wrestler, almost suffocating me.
"You really want to play that game with us?" Raminskij asked me.
He gave a signal to Akimo, on his right, who had his gun pointed at LeBon. The hit man lowered his gun and shot Jean above his right knee. Jean fell to the ground and started screaming in pain.
"Bastards!" I yelled.
I tried to yank myself away from the neck grasp, but Andersen tightened his arm around me even more. I was losing my breath and thousands of bright dots appeared before my eyes.
"Tell us where the dragons are, Ports", Raminskij threatened, "Or we'll put the next bullet in his heart instead of his leg".
"Don't do it, Jeq", LeBon groaned on the ground.
Raminskij kicked him in the side and went back to looking at me.
"So?"
Do you remember what I was saying about courage? Well I didn't feel particularly brave in that moment either. In fact, to be honest, I was crapping my pants. But as Andersen was strangling me I could think of only one thing: they would kill us anyway, whether I handed over the dragons or not. So, why make their life easier? My throat was in flames and my breath had become a sort of wheeze. I tapped a hand on Andersen's leg and Raminskij motioned to him to let me go.
Free from the grasp, I bent over forward and coughed as if I were birthing a lung from my mouth. It took me several seconds to pull myself together, but the hit men didn't have any time to waste.
"So?" Raminskij asked me again.
You'll never have Whiskey, son of a bitch.
Still bent forward, I glared at him and with a hoarse voice I said: "fuck you".
Raminskij nodded, not satisfied at all, and Andersen went back to strangling me with his giant arms.
"Okay, you asked for it". He signaled Akimo. "Tenji, get rid of him".
Smiling, Akimo pointed his gun at Jean's head. I heard LeBon hold his breath. It was the end, we were done for.
It can't end like this. It's not right. I turned my head toward the barn, so I didn't have to look, but Andersen turned my neck and forced me to look at Jean. A shadow darker than night passed above us, sweeping the air with a hiss. It hit Akimo right as he pulled the trigger. The man jumped with surprise and wounded Jean on the shoulder. With a roar, the shadow darted away, above the house's roof. It was Whiskey. Without realizing it, I started screaming.
"Damn it, it's him!" Raminskij yelled pointing at the roof.
"Give it to me".
He grabbed the bazooka from his partner and pointed it at the sky. He shot an electrified net that missed Whiskey by more than a yard. The dragon veered tightly, turned around and came down on the hit men. Whiskey's mouth went into flames, shining in the night like a furnace, and out from his jaws came a
stream of fire that hit Akimo right in the face. The hit man started screaming and flailing, his head and shoulders covered in flames.
Raminskij didn't care, and ran after Whiskey. Even Andersen let out a cry of pain. He lifted both his arms above his head, to protect his face. Finally free, I rolled over to the side and looked at him. A little dragon with pink scales was letting out all her tiny fury, trying to blind him. If Deirdre had been there, instead of her, Andersen wouldn't have had any escape. But Sheela was a companionship dragon, not a battle dragon.
The giant pushed away her bites and tail whips, he took one of her wings and bent it. With horror, I heard her bones break. The dragon groaned in pain.
"Nooo! Sheela!"
Andersen threw her over the fence.
Out of myself, I got up and grabbed the hit man by the neck. If I had the chance, I would have killed him. But I wasn't a "battle" man either. Andersen got over the initial surprise in a hurry. He took one of my punches without blinking an eye, then counterattacked. Blocking a kick, he punched me in the stomach, then the jaw.
I crumbled to the ground, next to LeBon, gagging and feeling like I had hit a wall.
Somewhere, in the steppe, somebody yelled "You got him!".
Andersen hit me again, this time with a kick in the kidneys, turning me over on my back. An explosion of pain ran through my chest. I coughed and vomited saliva, my mouth full of dirt. One of my ribs must have been broken, because it felt like I had a knife sticking into the right side of my chest.
Blinded by the pain, with a last effort I tried to get up. For Whiskey. For Sheela. The second kick hit me in the temple, knocking me out.
I DON'T REMEMBER much from when I gained consciousness again. We were alone, Jean and I, in my uncle's barn. Jean was passed out, maybe dead. The air was full of smoke, thick and dark. Tall flames were eating up the dry boards of the walls, they went up to the roof beams.
The place was on fire.
My throat was dry, my eyes were teared up and the pain in my side was almost unbearable. With great effort, I got up and pulled Jean out of there, before the smoke killed us.
The Dragon Seller: A Tale of Love and Dragons Page 13
