As I looked at the scenic area ahead of us, I decided we were dealing with someone who had taken a serious overdose of weird.
Chapter 18
Nikki picked up the shotgun as I put down the assault rifle and wrapped myself in the remains of the clear plastic shell we’d used to wrap the bag lady in, in Nikki’s apartment. I draped it around myself hoping to make whoever was in the house think that I was bound.
“OK, Nikki. Tape me in,” I said.
She reached over and fastened it with some short strips of tape.
Though it looked like I had been gift wrapped in industrial plastic, I could—I hoped—push out my arms and free myself since only the small plastic strips of tape held the shell in place. My trusty Beretta was stuck in my pants under my shirt tails.
“Ready,” I asked Nikki and Jake.
“As ready as I’m going to get,” Nikki said. She jumped out of the van and walked around and opened my door. She waited for me to get out.
“Nikki, you’re going to have to act more menacing than that. Remember that you’re a tough old bat,” I said.
With that bit of prompting, she pulled me out and I gracefully fell on my side. I stood up and the plastic shell fell off me.
I swore under my breath and picked it up quickly, “Hopefully no one is watching,” I said.
“Can you fasten that back on?”
“Yeah. I hope the sticky isn’t too full of dirt… There. I think that’ll hold.”
“You think!”
“Shut up, prisoner.” The muzzle of the gun forced me forward.
“Hey! Remember the plastic is just taped on. But keep up the tough gal act.”
I immediately regretted telling her that since she gave me another sharp poke with the shotgun so I’d continue toward the house.
“ I hope the safety on that blunderbuss is engaged,” I said. ” I’d hate to have to get a dose of stun shell.”
“Shut up, pig.”
“I’ve created a Frankenstein,” I whispered to myself, forgetting about the throat mike. Jake’s laughter sounded in my earphone.
We walked across the thick grass and stepped onto the porch. The white wooden door opened on its own.
I hesitated at the door. “Get on in there,” Nikki loudly growled. I hoped someone was in there to hear her. I know it impressed me; I jumped right in.
And stumbled into the darkness of the room. My eyes quickly adjusted and I saw yet another bag lady sitting behind an antique oak desk in front of me.
“I’ve brought the prisoner,” Nikki said.
The bag lady behind the desk pushed a button and a large panel of the wall opened up to reveal a dark passageway. “Take him on in.”
With a shove from behind to remind me who was boss, I stepped forward and moved down the red brick hallway which had apparently been designed by Edgar Allen Poe on one of his worst days. The heavy wooden door at the end of it swung open as we reached it.
Behind the door was a room with three-meter high ceilings and Early-American furniture. A clutter of knickknacks covered the tables in the room and cheap-looking pictures hung on the walls. The carpeting was blue with stars while the walls had red and white stripes. A fireplace between the windows crackled cheerily with a fake-looking electric flame. The room was a monument to poor taste in kitsch.
“Well,” a huge black man, dressed like Abe Lincoln, stood up from one of the chairs as we entered. “Finally, we meet,” he said in a syrupy, bass voice. His eyes twinkled with an evil gleam.
“Won’t you have a seat Mr. Hunter.” He motioned to one of the stuffed chairs.
Turning toward Nikki, he said, ” I’d like for you to stay a moment to, uh, tidy up the loose ends to our business when Mr. Hunter and I are finished talking.”
I sat down. He eased his tall frame into a chair and gave me a mirthless grin that exposed a row of sharpened white teeth.
He smoothed the sleeve on his black jacket for a moment before speaking. “We lost a good man when we tried to bring in your van. They lost track of the van when it left Earth’s atmosphere. ”
“Good men are hard to find, no doubt.”
“I’d heard you had a smart mouth, Mr. Hunter.”
“Phil, please. We should be on a first name basis.”
“You can call me ‘Elijah Lincoln,’” he said. He flashed another of his heart-freezing smiles.
“Perhaps we should loosen your tongue and waste less time. Let’s use the truth drugs,” he said, again looking at Nikki.
“OK, Nikki, it looks like he’s not going to tell us anything without help,” I said.
Elijah Lincoln seemed to realize that something was not right. He sprang toward a small two-barreled flint-lock pistol which was concealed among the clutter of the table next to him.
Nikki followed the motion with her shotgun and fired two quick shots as he grasped the pistol.
I knew stun shells don’t work instantly. It takes a couple of seconds for the drug to be carried through the blood stream to the brain. So I didn’t just sit in the chair to see what happened. I jumped toward Lincoln as he reached for the pistol.
Nikki’s first shot nearly hit me.
The second hit Lincoln in the neck. He held the stock of the pistol and I grasped the barrel.
He wrenched it from my fingers and shoved me away. He ignored Nikki and aimed the pistol at me. Nikki fired another shot which impacted with his hand as he pulled the trigger. He fired—but the shot went wide.
He aimed again. Just as a stun shell hit him right between the eyes.
He fell right on top of me. It felt as if a giant redwood had toppled over.
“What’s going on in there?” Jake hollered in my earphone after hearing my groan.
“Phil’s goofing off again,” Nikki laughed nervously.
“Don’t listen to her,” I said after I’d finally regained my breath.
“Is everything OK?” Jake sounded a little exasperated.
“Yeah. How’s it out there,” I said as I pushed Elijah Lincoln—or whoever he was—off me.
“Still clear.”
“Good. We’re going to quiz Mr. Nice in here and see if we can get a ticket to the next stop.
This may be it, but I doubt it. I suspect he’s just another hired hand,” I said.
One vial of serum later, Elijah Lincoln’s tongue became quite loose.
We discovered that he was working for World Energy. That made sense; they stood to suffer the most if the anti-grav technology become generally used; at the same time it was all but crazy since the rods could be harnessed into large generators as easily as small. Knowing how the average guy on the street hates to fuss around with mechanical things, I could imagine that most people would continue to buy power regardless of how it was generated. Only now, the power rates could actually be reduced.
That was academic at this point, though. Our first task was to get to the chairman of the board, Sammy Dobrynin. The man who ran and all but owned World Energy thanks to a Russian ancestor who’d been a general and had the good fortune to have become a capitalist twenty years after the Soviet Empire had collapsed. By quickly taking over the Near-East oil fields which the Russians had stolen from the Arabs after the US had withdrawn from the area, he had created an instant empire which had been jealously guarded by General Gorshov Dobrynin’s heirs.
We fed Lincoln questions:
“Do you ever see Mr. Dobrynin?”
“Yes. When-I-have-important-business.”
“Would you see him after the Hunter interview?”
“Yes.”
“Were you to meet today?”
“Yes.”
And so forth… Little by little we played Twenty Questions, pulling the information from him.
We also extracted his hollow tooth full of poison and cleaned out his mouth so he couldn’t pull a disappearing act.