Read Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection Online
Authors: Gordon Kessler
Tags: #Fiction, #Retail, #Suspense, #Thrillers
Dedicated
TO THOSE WHO KEPT THE FAITH:
AUDREY AND DUSTIN, MOM AND GARY, KAREN, RHONDA, CAROL, ROXY, BONNIE, HAZEL, COLLEEN, GAYLE, MIKE, MARK, STEVE, WYNN, VICKIE AND THE REST OF THE CRITIQUE GROUP AND THE KWA
THANK YOU, THE READER, FOR FORGIVING SOME CREATIVE WARPS IN TIME AS THIS NOVEL WAS WRITTEN IN 1992 AND SINCE REVISED, AND THANK YOU WICHITA AND SEDGWICK COUNTY, FOR ALLOWING A LITTLE ARTISTIC LICENSE AND A FEW LIBERTIES WITH OUR FAIR CITY INCLUDING THE MERGER OF CERTAIN CITY AND COUNTY OFFICES.
SPECIAL THANKS TO DR. DEBORAH BRIGGS, DEPARTMENT OF VETERINARY DIAGNOSIS KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY THANKS FOR THE TOUR AND MIKE MCQUAY, WHOSE TALENT AS A WRITER WAS ONLY SURPASSED BY HIS ABILITY AND ENTHUSIASM TO TEACH OTHERS. THANKS, MIKE, AND REST IN PEACE.
Also DEDICATED TO GERVASE ARWOOD MICHAEL KESSLER
PREFACE
One day, during a hard winter, a deer crossed our snowed-up garden fence and was torn to pieces by my three dogs. As I stood horror-stricken by the mutilated corpse I became conscious of the unconditional faith which I placed in the social inhibition of these blood-thirsty beasts, for my children were at that time smaller and more (defenseless) than the deer whose gory remains lay before me in the snow. I was myself astonished at the absolute fearlessness with which I daily entrusted the fragile limbs of my children to the wolflike jaws.
—Konrad Lorenz,
Man Meets Dog
Lying beside me is a predator weighing about 35 kilograms, baring in his sleep a set of recurved teeth designed specifically to rend the flesh and crack the bones of large animals. Along comes my daughter, Ariana, four years of age and weighing about 20 kilograms, looking for trouble as must all healthy children of her age. Aha! Here sleeps the big hairy beast, almost twice her weight and countless times her equal in strength and swiftness-but, in sleep, defenseless. Ariana hurls herself onto the sleeping form, her weight driving a grunt from the animal’s lungs and he awakens, nosing her face affectionately before rolling clumsily onto his back, paws in the air, eager at once for such abuse as the child can dish out.
—John C. Mcloughlin,
The Canine Clan
PROLOGUE
T
he firefighters were the first victims. As they responded to the call of a downtown high-rise fire, in their minds they pictured an inferno.
The windshield of the blood red hook-and-ladder truck, like a storefront window, made it easy to see the three of them in the front seat. The enormous fire engine was the pride of the Wichita Fire Department, the newest member of its fleet. When it came lumbering down the street, bystanders would dispense with all other distractions and watch. On this day, with its red lights pulsing, air horn blasting and siren keening through the brittle morning air, the citizens stopped and stared. Although the high horsepower Detroit Diesel motor pushed them at over fifty miles per hour, the sheer massiveness of the twenty-ton fire truck made it appear to be cruising along only half that fast.
Kellogg Avenue during morning rush hour in Wichita, Kansas, was not a pleasant place to drive on an ice-sheeted day in February. Though confident, Fire Captain Jill Sawyer was tense at the wheel, every muscle taut. She concentrated on some of the less attentive traffic in front of them and the corner they must make a mile ahead at Broadway.
Lieutenant George Chambers rode shotgun. His eyes scanned the roadway as he gave out cautions like, “To the right” and “Watch that blue Chevy.”
The firehouse mascot, a seven-year-old Dalmatian named Burney, took his earned place on the seat in between. Even the dog was on edge, his neck rigid and eyes alert. He whined at unaware drivers who cut them off, sometimes letting out sharp
yip
s in complaint.
Four more of the squad’s firefighters were in the separate crew cab behind.
They were all heroes.
Although the last of a dying tradition of fire station mascots, even Burney had been honored three times for bravery. Most recently he’d vaulted through the window of a fire-engulfed mobile home and sniffed out a three-year-old hiding in a clothes hamper.
Burney was wired. He took his job seriously.
Jill glanced at him.
The Dalmatian’s lips stretched in what looked like a smile. He growled at a white van getting a little close to their right front fender.
George Chambers said, “Tell ‘im, Burney.”
“Good boy, Burney,” Jill said and just before she looked back to the road she saw the dog give her a quick glance and slap his tail once on the seat in acknowledgement.
Jill edged the truck to the left side of their lane to pass the van safely, knowing she’d have to get around the guy and back into the right turning lane soon.
The van matched their speed as if racing them.
“Dumb bastard,” George Chambers said.
“What’s he trying to do?” Jill said grimacing as she guided the big engine by a car on the left.
Burney barked and put his paws on the dash.
“Jeez,” George said, “the guy’s nuts.”
“I’ll have to slow down and let him have the road,” Jill said.
“No, wait,
he’s
slowing down,” George said and began rolling down his window. “I think the asshole wants to talk.”
“Don’t bother, we’ll shoot on by.”
“It’s that guy—that foamer,” George said. “I’m going to tell him to get the hell out of the way.”
Burney shifted over to George’s lap and looked down through the window.
“What, foamer?” Jill asked.
There were always guys hanging around the fire station. The firefighters called them foamers because they seemed to nearly foam at the mouth with enthusiasm at even the mention or sight of a fire truck. They were like little boys who always wanted to be firemen when they grew up—turn on the siren, brave the fires—but they’d never made it. Many of them were doctors and lawyers, but the majority of them were average Joes. To Jill, they were all nuts but harmless except when their fanaticism got in the way.
Burney growled.
Jill glanced over once more and saw the dog’s toothy grin and thought it was for the guy in the white van.
A car changed lanes in front of them and Jill had to tap the brake to avoid it. When she looked back, she could see through the side-view mirror that the van had stayed constant alongside.
“What the hell, Burney?” George said.
Burney was showing
George
his teeth, the dog’s eyes intense.
Jill raised her voice. “Burney! Sit, boy!” She was trading glances now between the busy roadway and the dog.
“Jesus, Burney. Wadid I do?” George said.
Jill demanded, “I said sit, Burney! No!”
It was a sudden move, like a trap being sprung. Burney swung around and grabbed Jill by her throat.
The pain was overwhelming. Jill tried to pull away. She inadvertently turned the wheel. The huge mass of steel responded violently, careening toward the median. She attempted to correct her mistake. The slick road was unforgiving.
She stomped for the brake. Disoriented, she punched the accelerator.
They crested the overpass above I-35 and crashed through two concrete barricades, leaping an eight-foot gap separating the opposing lanes. They fishtailed into the oncoming lane of traffic on the other side.
Warm blood streamed down Jill’s chest—hot rivulets down her back and shoulder. Burney had ripped into her jugular.
“God, Burney,” she cried, her right hand around the dog’s blood-soaked snout. She slapped at the dog’s face. No response. Clamped on like a bulldog.
“Damn it!” George said reaching for the dog. Centrifugal force pushed him back into the door on his side before he could grab a hold.
Whipping to the right, the sixty-foot fire engine swatted a sand-spreader truck from the glazed pavement. The orange dump truck crashed onto its side on the shoulder.
For the next twenty yards, the fire truck skidded sideways on the eight-lane thoroughfare until its big tires found a small patch of dry roadway. Delicately balanced on the driver’s side wheels, it skated for another fifty feet like a daredevil stunt act. When the tires blew out, the bottom side panel grated into the boulevard’s surface with a tremendous screeching that could be heard throughout the downtown area.
Like an empty drum, it began a cumbersome roll.
Ladders broke away from the truck’s sides and skittered across the lanes.
Four hoses slung out from the thing like tentacles of a tormented squid. Their heavy nozzles smacked the concrete in loud cracks as they bounced down the roadway. One found the windshield of a group of carpoolers in a Toyota SUV. It smashed through, crushing the driver’s chest and hooked into t
he steering column. The SUV suddenly became a pull toy behind the tumbling apparatus, yanked and jerked along as it was forced to follow.
The ninety-five foot aerial-platform arm tore away from its turret on the back, telescoped out to its full length and flipped end over end, stabbing the highway and automobiles like a child sticking at toads.
The cars and pickup trucks in front of the debacle slid on the frosted pavement, smashing into one another as they attempted to avoid the melee.
The fire engine rolled on, demolishing the vehicles in its path, crushing them like bugs into flattened hunks of iron. It was as if a maniacal auto-smashing machine had been set loose on the city.
Finally slapping down the guardrail, the behemoth tumbled over the edge of the highway and fell nose first. It slammed into the middle of Interstate 35’s southbound lane forty feet below.
The conflagration that followed would burn beyond recognition the bodies of the three in the front seat. In the aftermath, five civilians would be found dead in their cars along with twenty-three other citizens that were seriously injured.
The four firefighters in the back compartment would make it through the devastation with only minor concussions and burns along with a few cuts and scrapes. Sawyer and Chambers would never know the terrible irony: that they had been summoned to a false alarm—a prank.
Investigators would be unable to determine an obvious reason for the driver to lose control of Engine No. 97. They interviewed the witnesses. Some, in the opposing lanes, could see inside the cab as the fire engine highballed toward them. One man had seen something in a glance. From a distance of twenty-five yards during that brief moment just prior to the crash, he said it looked as though the dog had only reached over to give the driver a lick—a gesture of affection for his longtime friend and master. Still, that man’s wife, sitting next to him on the passenger’s side at the time, would recount the incredible fear and surprise she saw in the
rider’s
face as he gaped over at the driver and the dog. The investigators thought nothing of it. How could the woman be sure of what she had seen at that speed and distance?
During the autopsy, the medical examiner would not find the jagged opening Burney had torn into Jill Sawyer’s throat among the charred tissue. No one would consider linking this catastrophe to the ensuing slaughter six months later—except Tony Parker.
But he’d never talk.