Travis Justice

by Colleen Shannon

  Except for a few bottles of various chemicals that . . . her blood went cold. She didn’t know a thing about bomb making, but she knew the universal signs for poison and danger. Several large bottles with hazardous labels of obviously volatile chemicals had been wired together. An attached counter showed descending red numbers: 57:30. 29, 28 . . .

  Dear God, Kai had rigged up a bomb. Hana looked at the complicated wiring but she saw it was all connected to a central black box with a tiny meter. She was afraid to try to disconnect it. It appeared to have some type of tampering trigger, but she needed Ernie to look at it. She’d turned toward the door when a shadow darkened it. It was Ernie.

  “I realized they weren’t watching us and just left . . .” he said. His words trailed off as he too saw the bomb. He bit off a nasty curse she’d seldom heard him use even in extreme moments.

  Her heart sank. As if the circumstances weren’t dangerous enough, now they had a very strict clock for the entire operation. Kai had let her keep her watch, at least. Automatically, she synchronized her stopwatch dial to the time on the counter.

  “Can you disarm it?” she asked Ernie as she set her watch.

  He shook his head. “I don’t have the proper tools and I’m not a bomb expert. But I’m pretty sure that meter is an electrical-charge monitor. See how everything is wired into it? If you don’t cut the wires in the proper sequence, it will read the change in ohms and detonate. Besides . . .” He tried to shrug, indicating his hands were still cuffed behind his back.

  Hana searched every drawer in the empty cabinets, hoping to find a key. In a lower, heavy metal drawer, she found another hazardous bottle and this name she recognized: “hydrochloric acid.”

  Ernie saw it too. He looked down at the big glass dropper left with some other paraphernalia, including a pair of heavy rubber gloves. He turned around. “Do it.”

  “But . . . your hands.”

  “Wrap some of that gauze around them and try to use the acid sparingly.”

  When she still hesitated, he snapped, “Now, Hana. We don’t have time to argue.”

  Reluctantly, Hana pulled on the right-hand glove and opened the bottle.

  * * *

  Takeo saw that it was growing light outside. He wondered if the guard inside could see him if he looked out the window, and that made him run even faster because he knew the guard would alert his father that he’d gotten away. Takeo finally reached the windmill, which was still spinning. He easily ducked beneath the legs and saw the hatch his father had showed him before. It was embedded in the dirt and couldn’t be seen from the outside, or that the spinning windmill wasn’t attached to a pump.

  But when Takeo tried to turn the big flywheel, it wouldn’t budge.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Ross and Zach had jumped down from the tree and started across the pasture when, in the bright rim growing on the horizon, they saw the lazily spinning windmill beautifully silhouetted in the light. They both would have missed the small figure almost hidden in the depression beneath the structure, if not for several frustrated cries that reached them on the soft breeze.

  Warily, wondering if he was entering a trap, Zach approached the windmill so he could see more clearly. Nothing except . . . his eyes narrowed on the very top of a small person’s head and what appeared to be tousled black hair.

  Holding up his hand to indicate halt to Ross, Zach eased closer still. Either the depression was very deep or the person standing there was very small. Zach crept nearer until he could look down inside the dug-out hole where he’d expect the piping to be. He froze, blinking in shock, but knew instantly who it was.

  “Takeo?” he called softly.

  His face streaked with tears, Takeo turned toward him. He backed away from Zach’s blackened face and heavily armed figure. He turned to run, but Zach added, “I’m here to help your mother. She knows me.”

  With those magical words, Takeo’s fear subsided. He looked way up at the tall man as Zach dropped down into the depression with him, almost crowding him out. “What are you doing, little guy? Why are you out here by yourself?”

  Takeo gave the flywheel an angry look. “My daddy showed me this way into the cavern. Inside, they guard me. I want to get to my mama because I think—I think—” He swallowed back his words.

  Zach was both amazed and touched, for he realized instantly Takeo was afraid his mother would be hurt by his father. “That’s why I’m here. To protect her.”

  Takeo nodded eagerly. “I will help too.”

  “You already have. They won’t see us coming if we go in this way.” Zach picked the little boy up and, ignoring his protests that he could walk and he wanted to come too, lifted the slight weight up toward Ross’s welcoming arms.

  Takeo shrank away from Ross, and thinking he was afraid, Ross said, “It’s okay, little guy, I’m just going to take you to a safe place while we go find your mother.”

  When Ross took him, instead of subsiding, Takeo squirmed and kicked. Ross wouldn’t let him go and started toward the fence line, trying to restrain him without hurting him.

  When Ross didn’t release him, Takeo bent his head and bit him in the wrist.

  * * *

  Inside the clean room, Hana had to use the dropper three times in ever greater quantities, holding her breath each time she opened the bottle to avoid the nasty fumes. She heard Ernie’s sharply indrawn breath the third time, but he only backed up against the metal shelving and banged the cuffs. On the fourth try, the weakened metal bent enough for him to slip free.

  Immediately, Hana poured soda over his reddened and blistered wrists. He sighed with relief. Then he rinsed his wrists in the industrial sink. Hana bound the worst of the blisters on his left wrist, then she looked down at him. One wrist was blue and swollen from his self-inflicted wound and now the other one had acid scarring.

  But Ernie only winked. “Good thing I’m better with my feet. Come on.”

  Hana followed her sensei. They’d heard movement a ways down the corridor, so they had very little time to plan. Hana knew Zach must be on the way . . . she looked down at her watch. “Fifty-five minutes, Ernie,” she said.

  “I’m going for Takeo.” He paused at the door. “Hana, come with me. If we run now, we can all get away.”

  She looked at him sadly. “And go where? You know Kai will never stop until he has Takeo and I’m dead.”

  Ernie shook his head at her. “You really don’t know, do you?” He leaned forward and emphasized, his electric silver eyes boring into her, “Kai went to such lengths to get you arrested for one simple reason: He can’t kill you. He wants you out of his way, but he still loves you. If you have to face him in combat, that’s your only advantage. Use it for all it’s worth.”

  Outside in the corridor, Ernie hurried up the circular stairs while Hana snatched a hood and nylon wind jacket and put them on. Not a great disguise, but maybe sufficient to at least get her near enough to figure out what Kai was planning. As she walked, she kept an eye out for a discarded weapon: preferably a katana.

  If Ernie was right, maybe Kai would for once fight fair and face her in equal combat. But she’d be at an extreme disadvantage, not only because he was a better swordsman, but if Zach came with the blade, she’d be facing a death match against the best sword ever made . . . if she could somehow stop Zach from engaging him first.

  * * *

  Outside, Zach had the flywheel open and was heaving up the heavy hatch when he heard a masculine cry of outrage. He looked up.

  He saw Takeo kick Ross repeatedly, struggling wildly. Ross set Takeo down abruptly, shaking his wrist. A drop of blood drizzled down his arm and Zach realized Takeo had actually bitten him. Ross reached toward Takeo’s arm to stop him, but the child twisted free and ran back toward the windmill.

  Not sure whether to laugh or scold, Zach caught the determined little guy with one arm when Takeo tensed to jump down toward the open hatch. “This will be very dangerous, Takeo. If you’re there, your mother wil
l be thinking of you, not her own safety.” Besides, Zach thought but didn’t say, the boy didn’t need to see his parents locked in mortal combat. He was as sure as he could be that either Hana or Kai would be dead before nightfall—unless he could, in some improbable fashion, avert their fight and neutralize Kai.

  Takeo had pulled back his leg to kick him, when a blessedly familiar voice said, “Takeo! Mind your manners.” Scowling, his little face a tiny version of Hana’s when she was angry, Takeo turned toward the new arrival.

  To Zach’s huge relief, he looked up and saw Ernie.

  * * *

  Hana had never been down this corridor. She was walking against the flow of traffic, trying to see the end when she saw Kai’s lieutenant approaching. All Kai’s men had an air of finality, as if they knew they would die this night. But like the samurai of old, they were protecting their fiefdom and their shogun and they would fight to the death.

  Hana doubted if Kai had warned them they had less than an hour to die gloriously in battle or ignominiously in an explosion set by their own leader. But because so many of them had begun looking at her suspiciously, she had no choice but to turn around and go with the flow. However, even hooded and wearing a shapeless jacket, she was apparently quite distinctive, because the lieutenant pushed through his men and grabbed her arm.

  “Kai said you’d find a way to confront him. He’s waiting.”

  He dragged her up the corridor.

  * * *

  Outside, Ernie carried a squirming Takeo, ignoring his protests, to the fence perimeter. The Rangers and deputies had built a makeshift bridge of heavy logs suspended from the oak tree to make it easier to get past the electricity. Ernie was tall enough to put Takeo on the bridge. He patted the boy’s rear. “Go, Takeo. Your mother has one last battle to fight, and then she’ll be with you for a very long time. If you promise to be good and stay with that nice lady—” Ernie smiled and gave a cheery wave to Abigail—“I’ll be able to go back and help her. Okay?”

  Reluctantly, Takeo climbed down the tree into Abby’s waiting arms.

  * * *

  As he climbed down a metal ladder embedded in the limestone, Zach knew he only had about fifteen minutes left before the designated time to cut the power. Ross followed him down, and in the dimly-lit tunnel that seemed to have been carved into solid limestone, they saw two tracks leading away around a curve. They heard what sounded like metal wheels clattering. Down the other way, they heard the shouts of men preparing for battle. It was a universal sound Zach had heard many times before.

  As soon as Ross had made it to the ground, Zach pointed toward the tracks stretching away into the distance. Ross shook his head fiercely, pointing at his watch, giving every indication he wanted to follow Zach.

  Zach shook his head right back and whispered, “They don’t know you’re here. Do some intel before they get everything away and figure out how to intercept them. It’s obvious they’re wheeling all the evidence away. I’d go myself, but I have the katana and I have to get to Hana.” When Ross still hesitated, Zach said more loudly, “That’s an order, Ross. My dad gave me authority to lead this op.”

  Ross scoffed, “Surveillance only. We both know he didn’t plan an incursion tonight. Who died and made you God?”

  “Ask Emm that question once you get home unscathed.” Without wasting time with more argument, Zach kept to the edge of the corridor as much as possible and sidled toward the sounds of activity. But he was relieved to glance over his shoulder and see Ross heading the other way.

  Zach moved fast and he moved quiet. He made it some way up the tunnel to what appeared to be a crude roundhouse. Inside were carts that looked a lot like mine cars, some disabled and in repair, but a couple still sat on the tracks and were full of various types of drug-making equipment. Workers in white coats, filthy now as they sweated and loaded, labored over the carts. One finished his load and pushed a cart toward him. Zach ducked around the corner behind a rough outcropping. When the cart approached, Zach waited until the worker was even with him and gave the man a karate chop on the back of the head. He fell limp, half in the cart. Zach lifted up his dead weight, putting him on top of the scales and centrifuges.

  He did the same with the second worker bee. While he worked, a radio crackled with a harsh inquiry in Japanese. Zach knew one Japanese word and, depressing the talk button, he used it: “Hai!” He knew that meant “yes.” The radio went silent. Zach stuck it in his belt, feeling like a carthorse with everything he was carrying. He put the talk button on silent, then hovered indecisively in the corridor for a second.

  He knew better than to take the katana straight to Kai. But where would he stash it? He was still considering when a man lunged at him around the corner. He was dressed in black, wearing a hood, and armed to the teeth. He barreled toward Zach to engage, but Zach had other ideas. He was taller and used his height to his advantage.

  He lifted the katana out of his harness and held it high above the man’s head. “Want this?”

  When the man reached for it, Zach kicked him square in the solar plexus. With a horrid sound between a grunt and a whine, the man fell down on the floor of the cavern, knocked unconscious. Zach was dragging him up the corridor to the roundhouse when his gaze fell on the man’s katana sheathed to his back.

  * * *

  Inside the cavern, Hana didn’t react when Kai ripped off her hood. Their gazes locked. For a moment six years in the making, Hana stared at the father of her child. From her thoughts to her lips, the words took sound and form before she could stop them. “Don’t make me do this, Kai. For Takeo’s sake, I don’t want to kill you. And if you kill me, he’ll never forgive you.”

  Kai’s beautifully shaped mouth took on an ugly slant. “I won’t kill you, Hana. But I can leave you so scarred your handsome, rich lover won’t be able to look at you.” They’d reached the ring. Kai nodded at his men. One handed her his own katana.

  Making a mockery of the courtesy, Kai glanced at his watch. Hana checked her dial, too, and she realized Kai was deliberately delaying his own escape to run out the clock.

  He lifted the middle rope surrounding the martial-arts ring to allow her to scoot inside. She did so, but then she looked out at the men in various positions of stealth and defense, still building barricades and readying weapons.

  They knew the attack was coming. Kai wanted to be seen by the Rangers when they got inside the cavern because he was timing his escape to engage them a few minutes before the bomb blew. Hence, the barricades, with his men manning them. The other end of the corridor obviously led to another exit.

  He’d planned this, too, to kill as many of the combined law enforcement forces as possible. And he wanted Zach to arrive in time to see her scarred for life . . .

  While Kai climbed in the ring, she said loudly in Japanese, “He’s wired the clean room to blow with enough chemicals to cave in this cavern.” She glanced at her watch. “Forty-five minutes is all you have to live. He’s betrayed you all. Escape while you can.”

  Kai mocked, “Yes, run.” He pulled his own katana off his back, the wickedly sharp edge gleaming even in the dim lighting. “I would have told you all. It’s for them, not us.” He looked at Hana, lifting his blade in a mocking salute, with a bow so slight it was insulting. “Your lover’s afraid, Hana. Where is he? My spotters tell me he was in the pasture and disappeared.”

  “You haven’t asked me about Ernie, have you?” she mocked back, making her own travesty of a salute. “He’s escaped, Kai. He has Takeo safe. That’s the only reason he came. He played you like a fool. You’ll never hold your son again!”

  Then she was unable to say more, barely averting Kai’s angry lunge as he engaged her. She lifted the blade just in time to defend herself against his right-hand downward slash. Deflecting the steel, she brought her own up in the left-hand upward slice, but he beat her blade away. At the same time, he spun aside so quickly that he was in position to strike her unprotected left side before she could raise a
defense.

  She felt the blade graze her, ripping a gash in her clothes and slicing into her rib cage, but not deep enough to do any real damage. She began to bleed. But she’d been expecting it when she saw him spin, and given his warning, she knew he’d be going for her face next. Ignoring the pain in her side, Hana lifted the katana with the blade pointing straight up and slammed it sideways as he made a swipe at her cheek.

  With a hiss, their steel engaged in a stalemate, their blades entangled at the hilt.

  Time seemed suspended, and even the men who were preparing for what could well be the last battle of their lives, paused to watch the duel. For duel it was; there simply was no other word.

  * * *

  When Zach finally crept around the corner, having disabled two more of Kai’s men as he came, he saw not just a duel, but a battle to the death: The same battle he’d seen in his nightmares. He saw the shiny blood on Hana’s side and no apparent marks on Kai. Instinctively, he pulled his pistol, even knowing firing it would reveal his position. He also knew it was only about five more minutes before the power was cut.

  As he watched, Hana appeared to stumble as she moved backward, weakened on her left side.

  His heart thudding in panic, Zach steadied his aim against the side of the cavern and prepared to fire at Kai’s exposed back.

  Chapter 16

  Outside, John’s little army had deployed as he’d instructed. Men were strategically placed all around the grounds—some as backup in the trees and shrubs outside the fence, others massing in several incursion points that would essentially cover the entire possible egress from any window or door of the house.

  John, looking at his watch, stood next to the guy with the cutting torch. Zach had refused to take a radio in case it gave away his position, and John had doubted it would work anyway if there was a stone cavern beneath the house. So to coordinate, they could only operate on the original schedule. 0600 ticked to 12 on his watch. He lowered his hand in a slashing movement. The torch cut and they saw the few lights in the house go off. The faint humming in the current fed through the wrought iron died. Just to be sure, John tossed a twig at the fencing. It bounced harmlessly with no sparks.