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CHAPTER 12
Having reached the landing at the top of the stairs, I looked to my right where I saw Williams standing in the hallway by Mrs. Prosper's original room. With one hand he trained his gun on me and with the other he beckoned me by flapping his fingers to his palm as if to clap with one hand. I interpreted that I was to approach him. As I came closer to him, the blood on his hands and his sleeves grabbed my complete attention.
“Let’s go,” Williams ordered.
Within several feet from my immediate captor, I could read a hardness and grim determination in his face, but I also thought that I caught a flash of apprehensiveness in his eyes. The type of apprehensiveness or anxiety that would be seen by a teacher in the eyes of a student who had been confronted for cutting class.
In a stern hushed tone, Williams commanded, “Get inside, and don’t say a word.”
I obeyed and proceeded into the room. My stomach suddenly jumped into my throat, threatening to take all of its contents in its leap. There, sprawled on the bed, lay Mrs. Prosper — motionless. Her face turned away from mine. Gore besmeared her body, with her head oozing blood onto the pillow and bedspread beneath it.
Disgust, hate and, most definitely, a profound sense of fear welled up inside me. If these miscreants could brutally attack a defenseless old woman, what would they do to those downstairs, to Morgana, and to me? I heard the door shut behind me. I stared at the mutilated corpse of Mrs. Prosper and wondered if I would ever leave the room alive?
“We don’t have much time. You wouldn’t by chance have what we are looking for, would you?” Williams asked in a manner that struck me strangely incongruous to the situation.
My trepidation only allowed me to answer a simple, “No,” as I stared at Mrs. Prosper lifeless remains. A hand suddenly came up from behind me, went over my mouth, and something, what I figured was Williams’ gun, jabbed me in the back.
Short on air, strength and, courage, I watched in confusion and horror the bloody remains of Mrs. Prosper slowly roll over to the side of blood-stained bed and stand up.
“I hope that I didn’t give you apoplexy, Mr. ah . . . Dr. MacKenzie,” said the resurrected old woman, “but time is not on our side at the moment. Please, don’t say a word and listen very, very carefully. Do you understand and do I have your word?”
I felt the gun give me another jab. I nodded in agreement. Williams’ hand dropped from my face. His weapon, however, stayed where it was.
“Good,” said Mrs. Prosper “I’ll try to make this simple for you. The young man behind you is a special agent of the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency. He, regardless what you may think of him, Dr. MacKenzie, is a good guy. He’s been working undercover, but for how much longer he will continue to do so, is now in question.”
Utterly bewildered, I said, “And Smith and Dolan are — ”
“They are the bad guys, Dr. MacKenzie,” said Mrs. Prosper.
“Very bad guys,” added Williams.
“And you?” I asked sheepishly of Mrs. Prosper.
“Me?” she said, modestly, “I'm a good guy too, but not as useful as I once was, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Nor should you,” said Williams. “If you did, I’d have to kill you.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Well, he has the gun, does he not?” said Mrs. Prosper as she looked in the nearby mirror and straightened her blood blotched hair which I then discovered was actually a wig.
“Did you take anything from Foley's person or his room when you first tried to help him?” asked Williams.
“As I said before, no.”
“That’s a shame,” said Mrs. Proper. “It would have made things much easier if you had.”
Mrs. Prosper did an about face and looked at me in a queer fashion as if she were sizing me up at an auction. “Mr. Williams was hoping that Smith would send up Agent Boswell. Why did Smith send you?”
“Since Williams asked for help. Smith thought that I could do the job and that I wouldn’t offer — ”
“ — Yes, that’s right. I heard that,” said the old lady.
“Smith is holding Morgana as a hostage to ensure my cooperation,” I added.
“Not a bad move on his part,” said Williams. “You see, Dr. Mackenzie, when you came up here, you had become immediately expendable. Smith knows that once I tell you the identity of the item of our search . . . well, let’s just say that Smith had planned on never seeing you alive again.“
“Sometimes,” said Mrs. Prosper, “the less you, know the better you are . . . like the old adage says, ‘Ignorance is bliss.’”
“You were to kill me?” I said turning to Williams.
“But unlike Mrs. Prosper’s death,” said Williams, “your’s would have been on a more permanent basis.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Oh, by the way, the it of our search is a stick,” said Williams.
“A stick?”.
“You know, a stick, a USB thumb drive, a flash drive, one of those little doohickey things that can a store computer files,“ explained Mrs. Prosper.
“What’s on it?”
The bloody old lady gave me another penetrating look and reprimanded me in a professorial tone, “You are not being very careful.” She gave a deep look up into my eyes and asked, “How hard where you hit on the head?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Williams.
“You are right,” said Mrs. Prosper. “As a wise man once said, ‘We go to war with the army we have, not the army that we would like to have.’ Can you use a gun?”
“I, ah — ”
“We found this in your room. It belonged to Foley.” Williams handed me the gun that was found in Foley's room which Kyle stored in mine. “When this whole thing is over, and if you get out of this alive, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do about possessing a firearm that no government in the world admits to its existence.”
“You know this isn’t mine!”
“You’ll have to be more convincing than that,” quipped Mrs. Prosper as she took a quick peek at her oversized wristwatch. “Not much time, I’m afraid,” she said and then went quietly to the room’s window. She pulled back the white curtain just enough so that she could take a discreet look outside. “They should be here very soon.”
“Who? . . . Smith has my wife downstairs — ”
“Dr. MacKenzie,” said Williams, “if we don’t get a move on and prepare, everyone, including your wife, will be killed before you can say, ‘Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.’”
“Smith and Dolan are going to kill them?” I said.
“Yes,“ said Mrs. Prosper. “And they will be helped by those tough looking fellows attempting to cross the river in that motorized inflatable boaty thing.”
Mrs. Prosper gently opened the curtain a little wider for Williams and me to see out onto the river. Through the mist and rain, I observed a small dark green craft navigating the rushing currents. It was amazing to see the scores of angry, muddy waves buffet that little boat, but somehow it slowly, but steadily, approached our side of the river.
“Hey!” Smith yelled from the floor bellow us. “What’s up? Did you find it because our ride is almost here.”
Williams went to the door and opened it, and shouted back, “Nah, nothing.”
“Right. Well, you know what to do. Take care of your problem up there and get down here,” answered Smith.
“Roger that,” bellowed Williams in a full confident voice, who then followed his shout to Smith with a strong, but hushed, advisory to me, “Are you ready to die? — Don’t answer.”
Before I had a chance to react, Williams grabbed the wooden chair by the room’s writing desk, dragged it across the floor boards, and knocked it over. The chair landed on its side with a woody, thwack of a sound. He then proceeded to stomp on the floor with his heel of his boot several times, the echoes of which I’m sure were heard by the folks d
ownstairs. While Williams was doing his thing, Mrs. Prosper came to me with a large clear plastic bottle that once contained dish washing detergent, but now was filled with something else.
“Who would had thought my home brew of stage blood would come in so handy,” said Mrs. Prosper. “Now, we’ll quickly put this stuff on your head and face, then have you lie down on the floor; be very still with your face looking away from the door. And don’t worry, it doesn’t stain. It washes right out.”
With several squirts from the blood bottle to my hair and face, I went into a fetal position on the floor, facing away from the doorway. Prosper created a few blood puddles, that were made from her homemade red goo, around my body to give my demise added realism. After her stage designing exercise, she went back to lie on the bed and not a moment too soon, either.
I heard fast moving footsteps approaching the room which were followed by Dolan speaking from the hallway just outside. “Any problems? Our ride is here and the boss is itching to leave.”
“Nah, just giving the place a once over,” said Williams, as I heard him open the door.
“What’s with plastic bandage on your forehead?” Dolan asked.
“Oh, I got nicked on the head when I took care of the sheriff’s brother. I found the bandage in the old lay’s things. But not the device.“ Williams replied.
What bandage? I didn’t struggle with Williams. With my face turned away from the conversation at the doorway, I hadn’t the slightest idea what the two were talking about.
“You didn’t shoot anyone of our friends here, right?” continued Dolan.
“Orders were not to. I do what I’m told. I just cracked their skulls open.”
“Good. The boss wants it that way. When the bodies are discovered, after we blow this place sky high, their deaths will appear to have been result of an accidental gas leak explosion and electrical fire . . . which, coincidentally, touched off some poorly stored dynamite in the cellar that was to be used to get rid of an old beaver dam up river.”
“Yeh, if the police found bullets lodged in these folks, it would make them suspicious,” said Williams responding with an jocular quality in his voice.
“If you are all set up here, you can help me get the bodies out of the cooler and make them part of the pending accident.” Then Dolan congratulated himself on his good fortune. “I was lucky with that guy I wacked outside. The slug I fired went right through his skull — in one side and out the other. He won’t be hard to touch up to look like the rest of his dead companions.”
“And these guys?” I assumed Williams was referring to Mrs. Prosper and myself.
“Leave them,” concluded Dolan.
With my right ear to the floor, I distinctly heard Dolan and Williams leave the room and proceed down the stairs. “Now what?” I thought. Questions and self-doubts cascaded through my mind like the turbulent white waters of the river nearby. Was everyone downstairs going to be bludgeoned, blown-up, or burnt to death? How can I get Morgana get out alive?
The litany of gruesome possibilities playing through my mind. They stopped when I was shaken on my left shoulder. I opened my eyes, looked up, and saw my bloody co-conspirator leaning over me. “It’s time to spring into action, Dr. MacKenzie. ‘Once more unto the breach,’ as the Bard would say.
Quietly getting to my feet and taking out my newly acquired gun from my jacket pocket, I asked, “What is our plan?”
No reply was immediately forthcoming.
“Williams and you have a plan, right?” I asked getting more nervous with every fleeting second that passed.
“This will be a group effort,” flatly said Prosper correcting me.
“Fine. What are we to do?”
“Like those brave young paratroopers who took possession of vital bridges during Operation Market Garden — we’ll hold until relieved.”
“What in hell does that mean,” I loudly whispered, almost making myself horse.
“We do our best to protect the homesteaders from the savages and we wait for the cavalry to arrive,” answered Prosper with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Help is coming?”
“Yes.”
In the very brief time that we had, Mrs. Prosper explained that, “the powers that be,” would be monitoring any telecommunications from here. Before I was able remind her that the land lines were down, cell phones were useless, and there was no access to a two-way radio, Mrs. Prosper said that Agent Williams told her that Smith had a satellite phone. Prosper further explained that when Smith took his walk with Dolan and Williams, Smith called some his associates with the phone and ordered them to get him out of here. Smith’s call for assistance, Mrs. Prosper believed, had been traced. Now who would be monitoring the call is anyone’s guess. If I knew for sure, as the local saying goes, I probably would have to be killed for knowing.
Mrs. Prosper’s briefing abruptly ended. A woman from the floor below us had cried out. Her shriek reverberated up the stairs, to our room. My heart froze; my spine shivered — What happened now? Who screamed?
“That is your cue, Dr. MacKenzie. Sneak out to the landing to see what is happening. Offer any assistance that you see appropriate,” advised Mrs. Prosper.
It took a second for her words to sink in. I was to do what? . . . Sneak out and offer my assistance. Who . . . me? Was I to snipe at our captors with the gun that Williams gave me? Never mind the fact that I had only once fired a pistol, I didn’t know if I could aim well enough to hit my targets.
Then a second round of screams and commotion from the lobby rumbled through the inn. Instinctively, I looked toward the door, expecting the physical manifestation of the noise to smash through.
“May I see your gun, please.”
She took the gun from me, gave me a knowing eye, looked quickly at the weapon in her hands, flicked some kind of switch above its grip, and gave the gun back.
“The safety is off now. Don’t shoot yourself by mistake. Use the gun only as a last resort. There are many innocent people about. We don’t want anymore folks killed. Now let me see your face,” asked Mrs. Prosper.
I flashed her a glance, and before I knew it, she materialized a large yellow children’s plastic bandage and proceeded to stick it on my forehead.
“That should do. Now go, and see what is happening.”
Angry, confused, and short on patience, I growled, “What in hell are you doing? My head wound is on the back of my head.” I was about to tear the thing off my head, but Mrs. Prosper grabbed my arm with more vigor than any eighty-plus-year old woman should be allowed to have.
“Leave it on. For the next twenty minutes that bandage may protect you better than that gun of yours.”
I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. To my mind, in the next few minutes, there will be a killing spree in the lobby. So would it matter if I died with a bandage on my forehead. I wasn’t going to argue. “Fine,” I said and went to leave.
Again, Mrs. Prosper grabbed me by the arm.
“Give this bandage to Serena if you can; say that it is from me. Don’t forget now. She’ll need it.”
I didn’t argue. What was the point? I took the bandage and pocketed it before I snuck into the hall and quietly made my way to the stairway. It was just my luck that the roar of relentless windblown torrents of rain, that had battered the inn since the wee hours of the morning, had started to abate. The benefit of the tempest’s white noise to mask my movements had become a diminishing asset. Careful not to squeak the floor boards or to stumble as I walked because I still felt a little dizzy, I made it almost to the staircase. I stopped where the hallway wall ended and the railing began its five foot long run to the upstairs landing.
I laid flat on my stomach and pulled myself forward, just enough for me to be able to peek down at the goings-on the floor below. From my vantage point, I saw the people whom I left a few minutes ago, were all huddled together, facing each other to form a circle.
I saw Morgana, her hair messed up and her face
red as if she were fighting back tears. Sitting next to my wife was Bo, in a disheveled state. Her blouse was ripped, and she had incurred a split lip and fat eye. I could see Arezoo's husband, who was still cuffed to Bo, was also bleeding from the face.
Kyle and Peterson were slumped over, but I couldn’t make out whether they were hurt or not. I saw the back of the bowed heads of the inn’s staff. And I watched the two strangers, whom I assumed were from the boat, parade about the room; each of the men had a pump action shot gun. To my mind, the new arrivals looked cold, wet, and menacing, Which added an extra dash of anxiety to my already panicky state.
Smith paced nervously along the outside of the captives’ circle while asking his prisoners again about his missing item. I could easily spot Williams by his decorative plastic bandage on his head. Constantly surveying the room, he stood on guard at the front door. All of the inn’s attendees were accounted — except for Dolan.
I searched for him as well as I could without revealing my position. But for the life of me, I couldn’t determine Dolan’s location, or, more importantly, ascertain what he was up to. I thought that things couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.
Smith spoke again, his voice betrayed an increasing frustration. “No cooperation? Then no more Mr. Nice Guy.”
Smith raised his arm and aimed his gun at Kyle, “Sorry, Sheriff, but we have reached a sort of an impasse.”
I felt powerless. I couldn’t watch and closed my eyes. I heard a woman say,“No!”
Next came a shot, then more screams.
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CHAPTER 13
In that harrowing moment, I didn’t want to open my eyes; I feared the bloody scene below it would change my world forever.
“Damn! What in hell was that for?” Kyle protested in a wail.
The shot missed — on purpose? I didn’t care. I thanked God — Kyle was alive!
“Why are you going after me?” my brother went on. “I don’t have anything of yours. I don’t even have my own pants. When your friend Foley died, it was my brother, not me, who was with him. I wasn’t even here. Talk to my brother.”
FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2) Page 17
