Chain Reaction Power Failure Book I

by Andrew Draper

  But it didn’t sound that simple. She’s too scared for it to just be some jackass giving her a hard time.

  The mere thought of his sister in some kind of trouble, whatever it was, twisted his insides into hard, painful knots.

  If anybody’s hurt you, they’ll answer to me!

  The dull, disinterested voice of the ticket agent came on the line. “What city, please?”

  “A ticket for one to Boston, please.” he said. “On the next available flight.”

  The 5 mile trip from the dorm to Ithaca’s Tompkins County Regional Airport took almost half an hour. The heavy snow continued to fall and compacted ice on the roads played havoc with the traffic, sending cars skidding out of control, landing in roadside ditches or buried in deep medians.

  Finally reaching his destination, Brent entered the terminal. Checking the monitor board, he learned that all outgoing flights were cancelled.

  “There must be something…somewhere,” he pleaded with the ticket agent behind the counter. “I have to get to Boston. Please check the other airports.”

  Well over fifty, the obese woman’s unsympathetic face sagged further as she fluffed a tangled mass of garishly dyed red hair. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “This storm is moving east from Chicago and getting worse. I don’t know if we’ll find anything for today.”

  She tapped the keys on her computer and watched her screen intently. “They still have one leaving from Syracuse, it leaves a little later…but so far, it’s still going.”

  “Can I make it?”

  “If they don’t close the highway, you can probably make it.”

  “It’s a risk I’ll have to take. Thanks.” He said as he walked away.

  Getting back on the road, Brent headed for Syracuse. Fighting the rising storm, he plodded down the frozen expanse of State Highway 13 before turning northeast, onto Interstate 81. The sixty-mile drive took just over two hours.

  He elbowed his way to the front of the line at the ticket counter, garnering withering stares from the other waiting passengers. When he arrived at the gate, he heard the metallic twang of the boarding announcement. He sprinted down the jetway and buckled his seatbelt with only minutes to spare.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clark Majors scanned the area around him, looking for any sign of untoward interest in his presence.

  The brightly lit terminal at Boston’s Logan Airport was a beehive of furious activity. Majors sipped his cappuccino and watched the people moving down the corridor past his table. The mass of humanity scurried here and there, trying to make connections or rebook canceled flights as they worked their way through the crowd, cell phones growing out of their ears like another appendage.

  The annoying prattle of the public address system grated in his ears as he sat in the coffee bar. Cutting through the café’s thick background noise, the tinny, mechanical voice informed him his former partner’s flight would now arrive an additional half-hour late.

  Dammed Airlines, He thought in irritation, keeping a schedule wouldn’t kill you!

  He had already warmed the chair for nearly an hour, waiting for his partner to arrive. Chafing at the further delay, he checked his watch again and glanced at the news program running on the bar’s wall-mounted television. He found it repeating the same group of headline stories for the fourth time.

  I’ve got to get moving before someone notices that I’m still sitting here.

  He congratulated himself on having the foresight to bring a backpack, the nylon bag stuffed with newspapers. Wouldn’t due to be the only traveler without luggage, would it?

  The woman he called in to assist him with this operation was on the 9 a.m. flight and it was now 10:30. He ordered another coffee, paying cash.

  Clark Majors and Trish Davenport had known each other for many years and their torrid affair had almost wrecked a perfectly good…meaning profitable… business relationship.

  He remembered how it ended, their passion for each other cremated in a fire so hot it consumed everything around it. His mind drifted back to relive the day in vivid detail.

  The pair had been about to acquire a “package” for a wealthy Japanese businessman when the operation fell apart. The buyer, Tahiro Makodoma, neglected to inform his “purchasing agents” that the item was not only extremely rare, but also part of a collection of artwork looted from a family of German Jews during the Holocaust. Posing as the seller, the French Gendarmerie Nationale agent who seduced Clark did so with such blinding speed and skill that he still found it unimaginable to this day.

  Trish was devastated. Her professional anger infused with near-fatal doses of self-recrimination at having left her heart undefended against the man she loved.

  Both victims of the French agent’s cunning duplicity and feminine wiles, the inevitable downfall came in a hail of gunfire along a muddy roadside in Paris’ 12th Arrondissement. Clark was badly wounded in the gunfight and Trish ended up spending several harrowing days in a French jail before bribing the guards and disappearing through an unlocked door into a back alley. The memory of his own weakness still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Returning to the business at hand, he again unobtrusively scanned the busy cafe to see if anyone watched him, but the people paid no attention. He bristled, hating being in the open, but it couldn’t be avoided. At least he could blend in with the moving throng of stranded travelers.

  He had just finished his second drink when the arrival/departure board flashed a silent message that the long-awaited plane had finally landed. Clark decided to abandon his post in the coffee shop and wait outside baggage claim. He got off the stool and retrieved the backpack from under the table.

  The walk through the airport was uneventful. The guards at the security gate looked right through him as he passed by. Some things never change.

  Moving to a bookseller’s kiosk, he bought a newspaper and went through the pretense of reading it as passengers began to emerge from the long corridor leading back to the gates.

  He leaned against the wall, turning pages of the paper and occasionally scanning the crowd. After a few minutes, he saw her appear. He dropped the folded newspaper in the trash can on his way across the hall and made eye contact with her as she walked toward him. He approached the woman, took her bag, and spoke in a low tone. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “And it’s very nice to see you again too, Clark.” The woman groused.

  “Look Trish, let’s get away from this crowd first. We can talk later. I don’t like being here with all the security around.”

  The two quickly made their way from baggage claim to the parking lot and into Majors’ car. As he negotiated the airport’s outer loop, he vented his frustration at the plane’s delay by berating the other drivers, hurling obscenities with the skill of a New Jersey cab driver.

  Once they were on the road, Trish opened the conversation. “Okay Clark, now that we are away from the airport, tell me, why am I here?”

  He regarded the woman in the seat next to him. Although it had been nearly two years since they last saw each other, with her delicate jaw and button nose, Trish Davenport was still as beautiful as ever.

  The flaxen tresses that normally fell to the middle of her back were restrained by a large brown hair clip, the neat bun resting on the crown of her head. He also noticed she hadn’t worn the flat dancing shoes she preferred, but a pair of colorful canvas sneakers.

  “It’s fairly simple Trish; you’re here because I called.”

  She rolled her dazzling hazel eyes at his undisguised arrogance. “Don’t flatter yourself. I came because you said you had a job for me, and if that’s not the case you can take me back to the airport…right now.”

  He laughed at her false indignation. “All right, don’t get pissed off. I have a job for us.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “One that requires your special assistance. We can talk more about it after you get settled in.”

  “Settled in to where?
I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

  “I took the liberty of booking you into the Regency Resort hotel, under the name of Jean Hazleton. You’re a software designer, in town for a conference.”

  “Here,” he reached between the seats, pulling out a large manila envelope. “There’s a drivers license, credit cards, two grand in cash and the key to the room. I’ll be staying in the adjoining room. I also rented you a car, blue Chevy convertible, it’s at the hotel.”

  Trish smiled, impressed, but never surprised, by Clark’s thoroughness.

  “Good, I’ll need to get some clothes. A big shot software designer wouldn’t wear this.” She pointed to what she referred to as her “comfy clothes”, a well-faded pair of blue Levi’s and an oversized red sweatshirt with Arizona Sundogs Hockey stenciled on it in bold white letters.

  “I think you look fine.” Clark said, eyes roving the length of her body, his pulse quickening. Even the baggy sweatshirt couldn’t hide the fabulous curves underneath.

  Trish saw the way he was looking at her. “Hold it right there,” she warned. “This is business.”

  Their joint laughter broke the tension and then they continued the drive to the hotel in amiable silence.

  The room at the Regency was large and well appointed. Designed for business travelers, it had everything from a computer station to a full bar. Trish dropped her bag on the bed. Sneakers silent on the marble floor, she moved to the desk situated on the far side of a raised platform that held the king-sized bed and immediately plugged in her laptop.

  As she continued her unpacking, Clark entered through the dividing door between the rooms.

  “I got the connecting rooms so we could move between them without being seen in the hall.” He said.

  She thought it was overkill and gave him a ribbing. “Good Idea. We wouldn’t want the maids to think the software designer’s a slut.”

  His pinched face told her he failed to see the humor in the jab. “Would you get serious!” He snorted.

  She hid a chuckle behind a delicate hand, the fingers decorated with several glittering diamond rings. “Sorry.”

  He passed her a thick file folder. Sitting on the large leather couch, she flipped it open and looked at the picture clipped to page one. “Who’s the nerd?”

  He grunted in mild annoyance at her continued frivolity. “The nerd, as you called her, is Dr. Jennifer Ryan. She is a research scientist and the reason we’re here. My client is willing to pay a large sum of money for a battery she developed.”

  She tuned to him, cocking one eyebrow. “All this for a battery?”

  He headed for the bar located on the right side of the room, a few feet away. “Correction…all this for a five million dollar battery.”

  “Five million dollars,” Her eyes expanded as she rolled the figure off her tongue like candy. “This must be some kind of battery.”

  “Apparently, it is. But that’s not important. We just have to get it before someone else does.”

  “Who?” she asked, continuing to read, the folder now spread out on her lap.

  Trish didn’t like other people involved in her work. She knew that every person who was involved in a mission presented a potential security risk, and she didn’t like unnecessary risks.

  She heard the unmistakable tinkle of ice cubes and saw Clark filling a glass.

  “I hate to drink alone. Want one?” he asked.

  She hesitated for a moment. Her conflicting emotions bombarded her with indecision about even seeing him, never-mind working with him, again.

  “Sure. A small one though, just a snack-tail.”

  Not quite sure she could trust herself with him so close, she quickly got back to business. “Who is this guy, the one who’s after Ryan?”

  He handed her a square glass half full of Gentleman Jack on the rocks.

  “A guy named Phillip Temple. I checked him out. He’s head of the Temple Corporation.”

  The aroma of the whiskey reached her nose. “Jack Daniels, my favorite,” she took a generous sip, enjoying the taste and mild burn of the fine sour mash as it slid down. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

  “I remember everything about you, Trish. Haven’t you realized that by now?”

  She raised a finely-plucked eyebrow at the remark but let it go unanswered, half afraid of what she would say. “What do we know about this Temple?”

  He sat down next to her on the sofa, close enough for her to smell the masculine sent of his spicy aftershave. The lingering cologne flooded her thoughts with fleeting memories of happier times.

  She could already feel the beginnings of that familiar tingle, the tell-tale warmth of her body’s uncontrollable reaction to his presence. She tried to concentrate as her rational mind battled that inner stirring she couldn’t fight off or evade.

  “Not much really,” he said between sips. “He runs a big conglomerate, very rich. He keeps to himself and manages to stay one step ahead of the I.R.S. investigators. I don’t anticipate any serious problems from him.”

  She put her drink down on the coffee table and turned to face him. “Really, and why is that?”

  “From what I was able to find out, he’s more into the finer things in life. You know, cocktail parties, fundraisers…rubbing shoulders with politicians…sleeping with their wives.”

  He took another sip of his drink, collecting his thoughts before going on. “My contacts tell me he’s by no means a Boy Scout, but I don’t think he has the stomach to get down in the mud with the big boys.”

  Why act like this Temple doesn’t exist?

  She was puzzled, and unnerved, by his attitude toward Temple. Since the painful lessons of Paris, she knew Clark never underestimated anyone when it came to operational details. This was a development she didn’t like at all. She gave voice to her reservations. “So we should ignore him? That doesn’t sound too smart.”

  “No. Quite the contrary,” he said. “We’ll keep a close eye on him and make sure he stays out of the way.”

  She thought it over, regaining her glass and taking another sip. Feeling the alcohol invade her system, a small shudder swept through her.

  I can’t believe I’m sitting here with him after…what happened in Paris. He still looks great, but I can’t go through that kind of pain again.

  “I take it you’ve tried to locate Ryan and can’t.” She said after a short pause, sweeping the introspection from her mind.

  He looked in to his glass as he swirled the brown liquid in circles. “I went to her apartment…no luck. So I’ve been staking it out. She hasn’t been home in three days.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend? She might be sleeping at his place.” Trish offered.

  “Not as far as I could tell. I tossed her house thoroughly and didn’t find anything.”

  “No family?” she asked.

  “None local. I think we might have to take her at work.” He said. “We can’t wait around forever.”

  Trish shifted slightly in her seat, instantly uneasy. “Are you sure that you want to do that?” she said, trepidation creeping into her soft voice.

  “Why, don’t you think we can pull it off?”

  “Of course we can. But her file says she works for some kind of a research lab, there’s bound to be heavy security.”

  Always a pillar of confidence, Clark placated her. “I think if we play our cards right we can catch her between the house and the lab.”

  Why be so nonchalant?

  Her inner voice screamed in warning. The thought of grabbing Ryan off the street was tantamount to insanity.

  It’s too easy to be seen…or to have some goody-goody interfere. If that happens then somebody’s going to get hurt…again.

  A veteran of many assignments like this, she had no problem killing, but only when…and if…it became unavoidable.

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit risky…after Paris?”

  He frowned at the noncommittal look on her face. “I think if we keep to the plan and
move fast, no one will notice until it’s too late.”

  Trish closed the folder and placed it on the richly inlaid coffee table.

  I know you think you’re infallible, but I still don’t like it. Too many ways to screw up.

  “I don’t know Clark; if she doesn’t show up for work then her boss has got to notice, right?”

  “We grab her today, or on the way to the office on Monday. We’ll have at least a day before anyone starts looking for her.”

  She watched the smile grow on his handsome face, obviously congratulating himself on what he perceived to be a brilliant plan. Doubt still burned in her mind, and against her better judgment, she pushed it aside with a large swallow of whiskey.

  “All right, that gets us Ryan, but how do we get the stuff out of the lab?”

  He grinned, a charming grin she remembered all too well. Against her conscious control, her body again responded with that unwanted, yet inescapable, heat.

  “This is the best part of the plan,” he said, the disarming smile enough to corrupt an Anglican Bishop’s wife. “She gets it out for us.”

  She hesitated a moment, staring in mild shock and disbelief. Taking another sip of the whiskey, she continued. “You’re joking, right?”

  He waved his glass in a sweeping gesture. “Once we have her, we escort her to her office and bring it out with us”

  Trish shook her head at the sheer audacity of the plan.

  “Then we deliver her to my client and collect the five million.” He said, still smiling at her.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask, then what?”

  “Then you get paid…and your part is finished.”

  For the first time in their long and sorted history, the extent of his arrogance genuinely worried her.

  “Let me get this straight. First you want to wait outside her house or office to kidnap her, then we use her to get into a secure government lab and retrieve the design data…and then just waltz out of the building with no one the wiser. Are you out of your mind?”