Chapter Forty-Two #2
Once inside the copper protective barrier of the walls, the attacker climbed to his feet but then grabbed at his own neck, dropping his weapon as he did so. Zack didn’t understand what was happening at first, but his opponent stopped fighting him and began clutching his throat.
Soon the big man began backpedaling towards the MRI machine. His own feet slipped in Zack’s blood, he stumbled backwards faster, and only when the man fell back on the patient table and slid into the scanner did Zack realize the man must have had some sort of a large chain around his neck.
He was effectively being strangled inside the 3 Tesla scanner.
Zack had no metal on him at all, however, so he quickly left the room, returned to the control room, and saw the technician pulling herself back to her feet.
He shouted to her. “What’s the biggest piece of magnetic metal in this room?”
Her eyes widened, but she understood. She pointed to a single oxygen tank in the far corner from the door to Zone 4.
Zack ran to it, looked through the operator’s window, and saw that the man with the chain had managed to break free before he was strangled, and the one who’d been on the floor was now back on his feet, rushing to help the other man.
Zack hefted the heavy steel tank and ran towards the open door, and before he passed the threshold, he threw it up and into the air.
The tank dropped to the floor but immediately began skidding through the scan room, faster and faster and faster, towards the two men in front of the cylindrical Tesla magnet.
The tank then flew through the air, slammed into the patient table, and hit both men on its way towards the bore of the machine.
The tank struck one of the men in the face hard enough to kill him instantly, and Zack grabbed the gun off the control table, moved back to the door, and fired a single round into the scan room before the pistol was wrenched from his hand.
Looking again through the safety of the operator’s window, he saw both men dead, blood everywhere inside the scan room.
He knew that some of it was his, because even here in the control room he’d smeared the floor red.
The technician was back on her feet, but Zack turned away from her and raced back into the dressing room. He made it to his locker; the key was somewhere in the control room but he just grabbed the top of the wooden door and pulled with all his might.
The door snapped open easily, and he retrieved his clothes.
The technician entered, bringing him a pressure bandage and a roll of tape.
He spent twenty seconds bandaging himself, and then he looked up at her. “You have a side door out of here?”
“No. Just the one entrance.”
“Look. I kind of need to not be stopped by the police right now.”
She took one look at him, gave him a curt nod, then said, “Put your clothes on, wait in here one minute, then just go. I won’t point you out to security.”
“Thanks,” he said, and he put his injured leg into the leg of his jeans with a wince.
—
Minutes later Zack calmly unlocked his truck and climbed in. Police were everywhere, so he took a chance that if there were more attackers around watching for him, they wouldn’t act at least until he got out of the parking lot.
He drove to a nearby convenience store, climbed out of his vehicle, then dropped down to look under it.
Using the light of his iPhone, he found the tracker on his car in under thirty seconds.
He removed the magnetized device, walked over to a Land Rover at the gas pump, saw that the owner was inside the store, and slapped the tracker on the rear of the vehicle.
Zack was back on the road in his own truck in under a minute, and seconds after that, his phone rang.
He saw that it was Hanley, and he answered quickly. “If you’re calling to tell me I’m in danger, then you’re too late. I just got hit. Two enemy down. I’m clear. A little banged up but mobile.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hanley exclaimed. “Were these guys Gauntlet, you think?”
“Negative. Looked like a couple of skinheads. Not as professional as the Gauntlet Group goons we’ve run into. Tatted necks. Muscles, though they didn’t really have the brains to know how to use them.”
“If they’re nationalist dudes, then they’re probably working with Lancer. They’re dead?”
“Somebody’s gonna have to shovel them into body bags.”
“Any way law enforcement can link you to what happened?”
“For sure. I was getting my MRI. My name, insurance, everything. I wasn’t using Lyle Hart; I was still Zack.”
Hanley said, “I’ll talk to Lacy. We can make that part go away; my concern is Lancer. He’s probably still out there. If he just sent a couple of flunkies after you, and didn’t do the op himself, then I expect he had some other play in mind.”
“Yeah, I just cleared a tracker they put on my truck, so they won’t be able to…”
Zack stopped talking, so Hanley said, “Night Train?”
A wave of panic washed across Zack. He’d been so hyped up on adrenaline that he hadn’t picked it up, but Hanley was absolutely right. Lancer was out here, in Boulder; he’d tracked him to the imaging center, and he knew where he’d been right before the imaging center.
The bakery.
Andie’s bakery.
Court Gentry’s voice came over the line now. “Hey, man, I’m en route to Boulder. There was a breach of personal information about you and me out of CIA yesterday. I’ll be there in three hours.”
Zack still did not speak.
“Hey, brother? You with me?”
Zack’s meaty hands clutched the steering wheel so hard he thought he might rip it off.
Finally, Court said, “Hey. It’s okay. I just told Matt about your little girl out there. He knows. If she’s in some kind of trouble, we’re going to—”
Hightower finally responded, his voice even more intense than usual.
“Her name is Andrea Delaney. Get Gumdrop working on this. Right now, she’s supposed to be at Eldora Mountain snowboarding.
I don’t know who took her there. She’s fifteen, doubt she’s driving.
I don’t know what she’d be wearing or where she’d go when she got there. ”
Jill Mori came on the line; her voice was all business. “Parents’ names? We can try to track phones.”
Zack hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to know this information himself, and he sure as hell wasn’t supposed to blab it to anyone else. If she was not in danger, this could screw up her world over here.
But then he thought about Lancer, about the guys he’d just dealt with in the MRI center, and he relented.
“Father is Peter Delaney. He’s deputy fire chief out here.
Mom is Tiff”—he caught himself—“Jennifer Delaney. I’m heading to my apartment now to get some gear. Help me find Andie before they do.”
Court said, “I’m kitted up with guns, ammo, and body armor. Got equipment for you, too.”
Hanley said, “Gumdrop will be in touch.”
Zack hung up. He was on the highway heading back to his apartment; the snow was picking up.
Just like Andie had said it would.
A minute later, his phone rang. It wasn’t his Signal app, just his cell service, and the number didn’t show up on the screen, but he decided he’d better answer it.
Nervously, he tapped a button on his steering wheel and said, “Yeah?”
An unfamiliar voice came over the line. “Dude…I’ve been listening to the police scanner. Some crazy shit! It sounds like you left a fucking mess back there, didn’t you?”
“Who is this?”
“This could have been so simple. Not involve anybody but you. But I know your type, Hightower, and I had a funny feeling you were going to weasel your way out of that somehow. You kill those guys in your underwear? That’s impressive, but it wasn’t exactly unexpected.”
Hightower wasn’t sure, but he took a chance. “This is Kincaid, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” the man replied, but Zack heard something in the voice that told him he was right.
Zack said, “I always heard you were a piece of shit. You didn’t have the balls to come at me yourself? Why is that not a surprise?”
He pulled his pistol from his now-open lockbox, held with his free hand between his knees as he drove. It felt comfortable. Soothing, somehow. He squeezed the grip tightly, wishing he was aiming in on Lancer’s brainpan right now.
Lancer said, “Honestly, I would have liked to be there myself, but I was a little busy. I was so sure those two dipshits were going to make a mess of things at the clinic that I was already on plan B, and I couldn’t be there for the fireworks.”
Zack was doing sixty miles an hour in the heavy snow. He said nothing.
Kincaid himself paused a moment, then said, “My plan B, if you haven’t guessed, was to grab your kid.”
A wash of panic coursed through Zack Hightower. The wipers swept snow and ice and water off the windshield in front of him; he blinked once, twice, said nothing.
“C’mon, fucker!” Lancer shouted. “Say it. Say, ‘What kid?’ I fucking dare you.”
Zack wasn’t going to give this man what he wanted. Right now, all he wanted to do was figure out where Andie was. Desperately, he tried to think of words to say that could elicit this.
After a moment, Kincaid said, “Does she know? Does she know you’re the dude who gave her up? I guess I could ask her.”
“If you fucking touch her, I’ll—”
“Don’t pretend to give a shit now, Hightower. If you cared about her back then, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”
“You kidnapped her?”
“I did.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“You don’t make the rules, asshole.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to trade.”
“Me for her? You got it. Me, unarmed, for her, unhurt. Let’s do it right now.” Zack was serious. He would toss his weapons and meet up with Lancer to save Andie.
But Lancer had other plans. He said, “Nope. That’s not the trade I want.”
“What…what then?”
“You have until five p.m. to get the Gray Man here. I imagine he’s across the country.
I don’t give a shit. Feed him a story, get him on the way.
You give him to me, I give you Andrea. If I even smell a hint of the cops in that time, and believe me, I know the smell of cops, that kid will die, and I’ll be gone. ”
“Wait,” Zack said. “Hang on. Just…just hold on a second. How am I supposed—”
“My employers know everything, Zack. We know Courtland Gentry and you and Matthew Hanley are working together. I know you can get Gentry here. Tell him whatever you want. I’ll give you a location, you tell him it’s you he’ll meet there.
He shows up, the girl walks free. It’s her only fucking chance, man. ”
Zack’s mind raced. The stinging in his leg was forgotten. “Look…what about me? You sent those guys after me at the clinic. Obviously, your bosses want me, just the same as—”
“It’s not what they want that matters. It’s what I want. You, Hightower, you don’t mean shit to me. Court Gentry is the man who put me in prison in Cuba, and he’s gonna pay, or your kid’s gonna pay.”
It was quiet between them, Zack trying to think of some other way to bargain. Then Kincaid said, “You turned your back on that girl a long time ago, bro. Don’t do it again.”
“Wait.”
“I’ll wait. I’ll wait five hours, twenty-eight minutes. Get Gentry to Boulder, I’ll call you back at five p.m. and give you a location. It will be in the mountains, within thirty-minutes’ drive time of the airport.
“If Gentry shows up, you and your girl walk away from this.”
Scott Kincaid ended the call.
Hightower tried to control his emotions, to come up with some kind of a plan.
He didn’t have much, but after a few seconds, he did have something.
He did not know where they’d take Andie, but at least he knew where they grabbed her from. He put Eldora Mountain into his navigation system and saw he was forty minutes out if he drove the speed limit.
He’d make it in a half hour despite the snow, he told himself, and he called Hanley back.